


Captain Grace: Divided We Stand

by always_a_birthday_girl



Series: Captain Grace [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Avengers AU, Don't Have to Know Canon, Everyone Is Gay, Frank makes an appearance for ten seconds, Hazel is there to blow things up, M/M, Nico is gay, and Jason makes a lot of questionable decisions, based on civil war, basically an ensemble because i have a complete inability to restrain myself, everyone is a superhero with sketchy backstories, jason is gay, leo is not gay but he has some serious issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-08-22 18:45:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 49,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8296190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/always_a_birthday_girl/pseuds/always_a_birthday_girl
Summary: Jason's trying to romance Nico back to the light side, if only every other person on the damn planet would stop getting in his way.





	1. 1943

**Author's Note:**

> _I named Jules after Nico's zombie chauffeur even though he's a totally different character. Hank was a name I pulled out of a hat. There will be no other OCs in this story, I promise._

Funny story, this. Nico never wanted to go to war. Nico hated fighting, hated violence; there was enough suffering in the world, he reasoned, that he had no business going around making more. 

But Jason had been signing up. Jason, who’d never filled out his height, who still took sick every winter like clockwork, who was probably going to die before he was twenty one since his mama never stuck around to drill some sense into his thick head; that fathead was trying to enlist.

And Nico, who had no desire to live in a country where Jason was not, went on and wrote his name down, too. Went through the physicals, went through the psychs. They made sure he wasn’t a weakling or a nutter or apt to desert in the middle of battle for no reason at all, and he passed, flying colors, the only good marks he ever got on a test. 

Through the whole process, while they measured his chest and his thighs and his cock, and asked him inane questions like what happened to his mother (he’s still not sure about these head-shrinks, hopes to God their psycho-babble is just another phase and the world will go back to real doctoring soon), he just kept thinking about Jason, how he couldn’t let Jason run off and fight an entire war without him. 

Wasn’t just because he was scared of letting the boy out of his sight for fear of what might happen; he just knew that if Jason left, he’d come back some stranger who didn’t give a piss about Nico. Maybe he’d build up some muscles on those skinny arms and flesh out his face, always drawn from his last bought of the sickness, and find real work, and wouldn't need Nico to support him anymore. 

Nico thought that might kill him. He’d lost his mother, his sisters, and he’d never had a father; but he’d always, always had Jason. There was something endearing about the boy, who had been left behind by everyone he’d ever loved but still found a heart full of it to spill into the world. Nico had spent ten years trying to deserve that kind of love, and damn if he was going to let a measly war get in his way.

He might’ve skipped out on his duty, taken Jason north to Canada or south to Mexico; but Jason had taken one look at the regulation duds in his hands and said fiercely, “You have to go, Neeks. For both of us. I’ll catch you up later.” And he’d smiled real bright, like he believed that. 

Because the CMO had taken one look at Jason, one listen at his weak chest, and shaken his head, oh no, not sending this one over to die--he’s already halfway there. Maybe it was TB, or lung cancer, or just an inflamed case of asthma; Nico wasn’t listening by the time Jason was ready to talk about it. Nico was worrying about being shipped overseas, and dying somewhere cold where no one spoke English, and never seeing Jason again.

“What’s with you?” Jules nudges him, hard, shaking him out of his memories, and Nico scowls at the dark-skinned man, rubbing his hands together against the cold. 

“What’s with you?” he shoots back, and his men all ooh like the assholes they are.

“You’re off in dreamland,” Cal says. Cal’s a skinny lad who isn’t really a lad at all, but Nico’s the only one who knows that and he keeps it quiet because she’s the best damn scout they have. She scrapes the bottom of her bean can with a spoon, gathering every last drop of the mushy concoction. “Thinking about your sweetheart?”

Cal’s an asshole, too. She knows full well he was thinking about Jason.

Jules whistles through his teeth. “A poof like you’s got a gal back home?” he crows. 

“Shut up,” Nico says to both of them. “I’ll make you run laps around the camp.”

Some of his men snicker; most of them edge away from him, closer to the campfire. They’ve been with him long enough to know that he’ll make good on his word.

It’s been a year and a half, by his count, since the military decided they couldn’t do anything with him and shuffled him off to govern this collection of misfits. When he arrived, they were a lazy stock of good-for-nothings; now they’re a lazy stock of good-for-nothings that are damn near experts on the movements of Hydra. 

Most days are like this, sprawled around a fire trying to keep warm while Jules bangs out a tune on a pair of empty cans and Cal sings along in a warbly, fake voice that makes her sound more like a fellow with an unbroken note rather than a girl who can--Nico’s heard her--sing sweet enough to make the birds weep. She croons, _let me call you sweetheart_ , and some of the men boo good-naturedly and others chug down beers they pilfered from nearby towns and pretend the tune isn’t getting to them, and Nico stares into the fire and misses Jason like hell.

The other days, the days in between these peaceful, hellish ones, are what Nico lives for. The days that Cal runs up, flush-faced and out of breath, her caramel hair flying in wisps around her cheeks, and seizes Nico’s arm to hiss in his ear, “I saw it! A kilometer and a half ahead, it was unmistakable.”, and they go off to raid another base, kick some ass, and fail to accomplish anything but confirming what they already know--Hydra is everywhere. 

The only time he’s not mooning over Jason is when he’s fighting for his life, and the only time he feels like he’s supposed to be here is when he’s putting the fear of God into some heil-Hydraing creep. It’s grim and it’s miserable and it’s a far cry from how he imagined his life would go, but there you have it. It’s all he’s got.

“What about you?” he asks Cal, in revenge. “Got a girl back home?”

Jules whoops. “That one? He ain’t even got chin-hair yet!”

Cal blushes, and glares furiously at Nico, who sticks his tongue out before he can catch himself. 

Sometimes, he finds himself acting the way he did when he was with Jason, and he hates it. The more he reveals to these people, the less he’ll have to give back to Jason when he returns. And it’s not like he has much to begin with; just a few memories, some feelings he promised Bianca he’d try to suppress, maybe his smiles. He saves them, nevertheless, like the pennies he used to clink into a Mason jar back home for rainy days, never mind that it was always pouring for the two kids in Brooklyn. 

“You know what I heard?” Cal asks, after they’ve moved past the part of the night where they tease each other about gals they know they’ll probably never live to get rationed with. 

“What’ve you heard?” Nico replies dutifully, expecting another yarn about clawed beasts or Hitler being from outer space. Those kinds of tales usually come from Hank, who’s obsessed with that sort of thing, but sometimes Cal’ll repeat one or two as well. 

“This was from one of the boys in the 45th, that we passed by two days ago,” she says. “Latest news from the homefront.”

Everyone in earshot stills, the men who pulled away from Nico now drawing closer, in order to hear Cal. There isn’t a soul out here who doesn’t crave news from home; who wouldn’t?

Cal leans towards them, face alight with the joy of being the one to deliver this treat. “They’re saying,” she says, pausing dramatically in a way that makes Nico want to slap her, if he wasn’t opposed to hitting girls in general, “that the U.S.A. has come up with a secret weapon--a formula that turns little weaklings into strong, burly men.”

There’s a beat. Then everyone--Jules, and even Nico included--bursts out laughing. 

“What the hell?” Jules adds, shaking his head. “Lad, you finally gone crazy.”

“It’s true!” Cal declares adamantly, and scrabbles around in the pockets of her dingy coat, pulling out a newspaper article. It’s recent, only three or four months old, and she passes it around as proof. “Look!”

Nico scans the clipping when it reaches him. It isn’t much; just a grainy photo of a man in a mask, a star on his broad chest, waving and standing next to the President. The article beneath is barely a paragraph long, but he reads it three times to make sure he isn’t mistaking this.

_(Carr, 1943)--The future of America is now! Chants of “Long Live Captain America!” and “Hooray for the USA!” could be heard throughout Washington, D.C. today as the purported Star-Spangled Man took to the stage, shaking hands with the President and charming everyone with his bright smile. “I was a scrawny kid from nowhere,” the man, now known as Captain America, said in his following speech. “But due to the miracle of modern science, I’m now a powerhouse--ready to beat back those Nazis and win the war!” And, indeed, this man proceeded to shock and awe the crowd with his demonstration of strength. He bent steel bars, lifted the President’s automobile, and knocked out ladies in the crowd with his stunning looks. Who was this man previously? “Like I said, just some kid,” the man himself said as this paper questioned him. “I had TB, I was dying in an apartment alone. When someone approached me, asked me if I wanted to be better, of course I said yes. I left my old life behind in Brooklyn, and I’m not going back.”_

Nico hands the article back to Cal. “That doesn’t say anything about a secret formula.”

“Well, it’s secret, innit?” she responds. “Anyway, the lad I got this off of swore up and down that he heard it was true--some sort of serum that turns men into gods. And you read the article--no normal man can bend steel bars, let alone one who had TB.”

“Sensationalism,” Nico dismisses it, but some of the details stick in his mind long after Cal put the article away. A sick boy from Brooklyn? A boy with a hero complex?

He’s gone crazy out here, seeing Jason where Jason isn’t. This clown in a star-spangled suit is probably a hired circus performer, someone to boost public morale. No man in a mask is coming to fight Hydra; that battle is for Nico, and his men, and none of them have gotten to meet the President or had ladies swoon over them in a crowd. They’re unshaven and smelly and hungry more often than not, swear like sailors and fuck anything that moves, and they’re the real heroes of America.

Only, they’re too busy being out here heroing to parade around being exalted back home. 

“I wouldn’t do it,” Jules is saying, when Nico tunes back into the conversation. “You couldn’t pay me to be in one’a those government thingies. Who knows what they’re putting inside you? Ain’t natural.”

“I heard, there’s a special ops group that has one of ‘em in it,” Hank says eagerly, leaning in close. “They have a man who has claws. Real ones, like in the Wolfman.”

The other three groan.

“Hank, you need to stop reading those dime-store novels,” Cal scolds, even though it isn’t like there’s much else to do out here. “You’re gonna ruin your head, and it ain’t too good to begin with.”

“It’s true! He’s immortal, too,” Hank says, and Nico shakes his head at Jules, who grins.

“Well, I’ve heard there’s a gent who can fly,” Jules says. “Wanna know how he does it?”

“How?” Hank asks.

“Gets in an airplane,” Cal butts in, and she and Jules laugh. 

Hank shakes his fork at both of them. “You just wait ‘til Uncle Sam gets to us. They’ll be doing it soon--every single soldier’s gonna be enhanced. We’ll be an army of supermen.”

Even Cal scoffs at that, and they let the fire die down a little. Nico orders everyone to sleep and takes the night watch, as usual. He’s still not used to sleeping out here--there’s too much space, too much air. He misses the cramped bedroom in New York, where he was lulled to sleep by Jason’s wheezing breath. Cloistered in there, even in the heat of summer, he felt hidden and safe. Here, he’s just exposed.

He wonders if it’s possible that this Captain America really went through such a transformation. He can bet that, back home, Jason’s eating up the story like fresh biscuits; of course Jason will love the idea that a scrap of a thing can become a hero. God knows he draws enough champions of justice on every piece of paper he can find. 

Jason will probably get some crazy idea that he can change, too, and he’ll be back to stalking the Recruitment Office in hopes that some scientists happens along and decides to mutate him as well. There isn’t a Nico around to drag him off and talk some sense into him, either. But there isn’t much Nico can do about that now, so far away with letters crawling so slow. For all he knows, Jason’s already gotten himself in deep.

All of that only makes Nico more determined to survive, to get home before Jason drowns in his own fatheadedness. It’s all that keeps him going, these days, the idea that he’s fighting in Jason’s stead, fighting for that chance to go home and wake up in a world that isn’t ruled by fascists. He didn’t want this war and he didn’t want this violence, this love of darkness that grows in him every day, but--as always--he’ll succumb to it if it’ll save Jason. 

Cal rolls over, bringing her bedroll closer to where he’s sitting at the edge of the camp. Her eyes are wide open, some light from the fire or the stars or the moon or, damn, heaven itself making them glint. “I’m sorry,” she says softly, for his ears only. “About earlier, when I teased you.”

He nods jerkily. “Me, too.” They don’t hold little things against each other--nobody does, out here. It’s too stupid to fight over hurt feelings or stolen beef jerky when they might be blown to bits or, worse, captured by Hydra at any second. “I know you’ve got reasons for what you do,” he goes on.

“And you,” she says. “You could say the same.”

Instead of answering that, since they both know it’s true and verifying it for the hundredth time would be a waste of breath, he says, “You think it’s real? Captain America?”

Cal shrugs. It looks funny, as she’s lying on her side and all. “Does it have to be?” she asks. “All people need is a little hope, and they become their own heroes.”

He bites back a disbelieving snort. “You sound like Jason.”

“Don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it,” she advises. “I’ve seen wars won over less, and besides, when was the last time you hoped for anything?”

“The night before I shipped out,” he tells her, the words spilling too easily from him. These are the sorts of things Bianca wanted him to keep secret, the sorts of things that could get him dishonorably discharged. But he trusts Cal; she’s taking a few risks, herself. And it feels good to not hide. “I wished for two things. One, that Jason would roll over and fuck me hard enough that I forgot anything else existed. And the second, that the world would end the exact second that I came, so I wouldn’t have to know what it felt like to leave him.” And so that he wouldn’t have to face the consequences.

He should be ashamed of himself, speaking of vulgar things to a girl, but Cal doesn’t even redden. She just purses her lips and nods, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world for him to want that. Moments like this, she isn’t anything like the cocky little kid who begged him to keep her gender a secret. Moments like this, she isn’t like anything he’s ever seen before. 

“You’ll get home,” she says, not in the hopeful way that most of them reassure each other, but calmly, as if it’s a fact. “You’re going to go home, Nico. You’ll survive this--you’ll survive worse than this. And at the end of it all, Jason will fuck you blind.”

A shiver runs down his spine. It’s different, hearing someone else say it. It’s scary, how certain she sounds. And he’s absolutely terrified that some of the men are awake, that Hank or Jules or Mattie or Steve might still be nabbing at zzzs and overhear what Cal just said. 

But when a second goes by and nobody springs up, crying, “Get out of here, you fucking fairy!”, and the world fails to end and Cal rolls back onto her other side and it stays quiet, quiet enough to hear the crickets and the thump of his heart, he relaxes. 

He feels downright peaceful on watch that night. He’s going to make it, he determines. He’s going to make it home.


	2. 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> constantly vacillating between angst and humor.

Jason’s never been so glad to see a rogue garbage truck in his life. 

He’s spent the past thirty-five minutes stuck in a hotel room with Leo Valdez, peering out the window every few agonizing seconds and listening to the man chatter on about the evolution of Harry Styles’ hair. Another half hour, and there would have been a Falcon-shaped splat mark on the city square below them. 

Now he pursues the a careening truck, which Hazel pointed out a few seconds ago. Considering that it’s barreling through the streets of Lagos without regard for the legions of foot traffic, he’s guessing it’s the group of terrorists they’ve been hunting down for the past three months. 

Two years ago, when SHIELD went up in smoke, any semblance of order in the face of Hydra evaporated. Since then, it’s been up to Jason and his friends to clean up these sorts of messes--ex-SHIELD agents dealing in illegal weapons and drugs and just generally being nasty to innocent countries like Nigeria. 

Jason gets that these people have to make a living. He just doesn’t understand why they don’t pick up a Burger King application like the rest of unemployed America. Or Walmart. They pay's great at Walmart. 

But no. It’s all guns, guns, guns, with an occasional CDC break-in to spice up the pot.

“They’re heading for the Center!” Leo cries, his shadow falling over Jason’s head. Leo has the literal bird’s eye view, so Jason takes his word for it, changing his route so that he loses sight of the truck but hopefully reaches the CDC before it. 

“I don’t get it,” Leo adds, doing circles overhead. “What’s in there that anybody would want?”

“You mean, other than the couple dozen samples of every infectious disease known to mankind?” Piper, sarcastic, over the com system. Also out of breath; Jason hopes she hasn’t run into too much trouble. Then again, it’s Piper, so . . . she probably has. And is enjoying it. “Gee, I wonder what troublemakers would want with those.”

“All of our sources said this was a straightforwards arms deal,” Hazel pipes up. She’s on Jason’s heels, slightly slower but only because of the high-heeled boots she insisted on wearing. “Nobody mentioned bio-terrorism.”

“Bio-whatthehell?” Jason demands, then decides he’d rather not know. “Scratch that. You kids and your catchphrases.”

Leo snorts. “I can tell you just turned ninety, Cap. You sound it.”

“Oh, wow, someone’s making a joke about my age,” Jason retorts. “Must be Tuesday.”

Leo’s shadow, the only part of Leo he can see, gives him the finger. 

“Boys,” Hazel rebukes. “We’re kind of in the middle of something, here.”

Jason grips his shield a little tighter, and urges his body to go faster. "We're always in the middle of something," he says.

This is serious, of course. Any kind of weapon in the hands of psychopaths is dangerous. But none of them can resist a little bickering, volleying words back and forth like a beach ball, reminding each other that if they don’t laugh, they’ll surely break down and cry.

The past few months have been hard. They’re just happy to be alive. 

Jason skids into view of the CDC just as the garbage truck slams through its gates, men pouring out of the overturned vehicle and storming the building. Piper skips into his periphery, her handgun leveled on the driver, who threw himself out right before the truck crashed. 

Jason sprints by her, past the truck and into the courtyard of the building. Hazel comes to a halt beside him.

Clouds upon clouds of a mustard yellow, unpleasant-looking smoke hover around the ground floor of the building. Jason has no idea what it is, but it’s coming out of a quarantined zone. He doubts it’s good.

He glances at Hazel. “Ready to put those new powers to good use?” 

She looks like she wants to say _no_. Her face is distinctly gray. But she said she was going this morning, and told them all that she was okay, so she doesn’t really have a choice about it. 

“Don’t expect Harry Potter,” she warns, raising her hands. 

Jason’s still fuzzy on who Harry Potter is, so he assures her he’s not. 

Hazel closes her eyes, concentrating. Four months ago, after Percy accidentally created an android that believed it was the natural progression of human evolution, she was exposed to . . . well, Jason isn’t sure what. But Gaea changed her, molded her into a servant, and she’s been recovering from it ever since. One of the side effects is abilities that confound even Percy’s theories about magic being unexplained science. 

As she concentrates, a ruddy vapor begins to leak from her hands. Jason’s seen her do all sorts of crazy things in training, from calling up dead spirits to plucking rubies from thin air, but he’s still not used to this part, what Leo calls her “mojo”. It’s something they’ve all failed to explain, the aura that surrounds her when she’s doing, for lack of a better word, magic. 

The power curls out of Hazel and around the filmy smoke in the CDC, containing it like a thousand minnows caught in a single Ziploc bag. She makes a twirling motion, and the smoke spirals upwards, farther up than even Leo dares fly, and dissipates into the atmosphere. No telling what that’ll do to the ozone layer, but at least no one’s dying this second. Jason’s learned to take that as a win. 

He thanks Hazel with a clap on her shoulder and instructs her to run interference for Widow, who’s predictably found some mooks to beat up and gotten in a little over her head. He dashes into the Center, ready to kick the ass of whoever’s responsible. 

It's been tough, sure, but it honestly hasn’t been a bad couple of months. He’s not all that thrilled about some of the changes, but he’s had worse times. This is the closest to quiet it’s been since Reyna disappeared and he ended up taking on the whole of SHIELD. He’s not complaining about the break. Hunting down terrorists and working with Leo to track down the Winter Soldier, Jason's old friend, feels like the days when he ran around playing in Hydra bases and looking for Nico.

He barrels through the CDC, finding evidence of the break-in but no culprits. Floor after floor, he goes up and up until he’s on the fourth--maybe fifth--level, and Leo sweeps in through a window, completely shattering it.

“What?” he asks, when he sees Jason’s disapproving look. “The place is already trashed.”

Jason gestures to the lab around him, which is wrecked. “They’re gone,” he declares, frustrated. 

Leo pokes around, confirming that yes, there are no terrorists hiding under the Bunsen burners. “Okay, I’ll send out Festus, get some eyes on them,” he says, detaching the mechanical scout from his wingpack. 

Leo’s kind of obsessed with Festus.

“But why here?” Jason mutters. “What was on this floor? None of the other levels were this damaged.”

“Maybe whatever was in that?” Leo suggests, pointing to a large, overturned cooler in the center of the room. It’s empty, but by the bright lights and elevated platforms inside, it used to hold something important. 

Jason goes over to it, but the labels--T-001, T-002, T-003, and so on--mean nothing to him. 

“We’ll contact the CDC, find out what they were holding later,” Leo says. “Right now, we should probably make sure that the creepies don’t make off with it.”

“Right.” Jason heads for the window Leo came in through, not wanting to bother with the stairs again. He hears his friend laughing behind him, as he fearlessly catapults himself out the window and towards the pavement. 

He’s been working on his heights-thing lately, which means that he’s been jumping off and out of the most dangerous things he can find. Leo thinks it’s hilarious. Percy thinks he’s showing off. 

He holds his shield in front of him, allowing it to take the brunt of the collision, and rolls to his feet. Little Festus whizzes over his head, clicking mechanically. 

“I’m scanning,” Leo announces, swooping away from the CDC. Jason tracks his progress with his eyes, sees him dive down for something. “You’re welcome, Haz’,” the man gloats, and Jason guesses he must have just saved her. 

“He was annoying before he had big-ass wings,” Hazel complains. “Jason, do something about him.”

“He did. He made me part of his team,” Leo says, and then Festus beeps. “Oh. Picking up something. It’s a white van, Cap, got the same kinda fumes that came out of the Center. The passengers are all armed. Heading away from you, to the west. Probably one, maybe two blocks over?”

That’s all Jason needs to hear. He launches back into a run, dodging through the narrow streets of Lagos as quickly as he can. The crowded market scene makes it harder to go all out, and he finds himself chanting a stream of “excuse-me-I’m-sorrys” as he goes. He doesn’t speak the language, but it’s hard to misinterpret the volley of swears he collects.

“And that’s why you don’t fuck with the Black Widow!” Piper says triumphantly. “I got half of them, Cap. The rest are up to you.”

“We helped,” Leo objects.

Jason rolls his eyes, though none of them can see. Sometimes he wonders if his team is capable of mature interaction. He seriously doubts it. “Good work, team,” he says. “All of you.”

He rounds a corner to find himself in another market square, this one smaller than the last, and--if possible--even more crowded. There’s a white van careening recklessly through the space, and Jason hurtles his shield at it, the toughened metal easily slashing the back tires.

The van fishtails, its back doors swinging open, and eventually comes to a stop. Three men stomp out, each one, as Leo said, armed. 

Cue screaming, stampeding, and general panic. 

Jason’s starting to get annoyed with these guys.

He storms towards them, flicking the magnet on his cuff so that his shield flies back into his hand, miraculously clocking one of the guys in the back of the head as it does so. Supersoldiers these guys are not; a run-in with thirteen pounds of vibranium is enough to knock him out. The second guy goes down before Jason even touches him; red smoke pouring from his mouth. Hazel’s work. 

Jason swings his shield at the final man, who stood motionless through all this, as if he didn’t want to bother with anybody else, didn’t want to even deal with his own teammates. As if he was waiting for Jason. 

The man blocks the strike, kicking Jason in the kneecap. Jason hardly flinches, driving his fist into the man’s stomach. His armor, which is crudely painted with a white cross over the chest, absorbs most of the blow.

Jason feels a strange sense of deja vu as he pounds this man into the pavement; and, a split second before he rips off the hockey mask obscuring his enemy’s face, he places exactly why.

Bryce grins up at him. “Long time no see, Captain.”

Jason drives the edge of his shield into Bryce’s throat. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks tightly. 

Bryce, like so many other turncoats, disappeared in the hours following SHIELD’s fall. Bryce, unlike those other turncoats, used Jason's friend Nico like an attack dog, repeatedly brainwashing him and forcing him to carry out numerous murders for Hydra. 

Jason doesn’t like Bryce, to put it mildly. 

“I’m a gun for hire,” Bryce says, through a mouth full of bloody teeth, and chokes out a laugh. “Soooo ironic, don’t you think?”

“I think you’re a piece of scum and I should kill you right here,” Jason snarls.

“Here?” the man asks innocently. “In front of all these people, all these civilians? They think you’re a hero, you know. You don’t want to let them down . . . not like you let him down.”

“Who?” Jason snaps.

“The fuck do you think? Nico di Angelo, of course,” Bryce snickers. “He’d come out of it sometimes, you know. The mind control--it’s not perfect. He’d been all sweet and disoriented, begging his friend to come save him . . . begging to die.” 

Jason drives Bryce farther down, until he’s sprawled on his back and there’s nothing between the pavement and Jason’s shield except Bryce’s thick, oh-so-fragile neck. 

“I heard all about you, you know,” Bryce pants out, seemingly undisturbed by this. Jason should find that suspicious, but he’s too busy being pissed and vengeful and desperate to hear any scrap of what Nico’s life under Hydra had been. “The exalted Jason Grace . . . the hero. Don’t tell Grace what I’ve become, he begged.” Bryce snorts. “Pitiful.”

Jason could crush his skull. Cut off his head, guillotine style. Or knock him out, and drag him somewhere private where he can really let go. 

He can feel Hazel’s eyes on him. If he tries anything like that, she’ll stop him. She doesn’t have to say the warning aloud for him to sense it. 

“Do you know what it sounds like, to hear him scream in absolute agony?” Bryce asks, a slow smile cursing his face. “Or maybe the little gasp he makes when he comes, when he realizes that he enjoys it--”

Jason backhands the former agent, slamming his head into the ground.

“JASON!” Hazel shrieks, shocked. 

Bryce, somehow, remains conscious. “Hit a chord, eh?” he chokes out. “Then let me tell you more. How I’d bring him out of it deliberately, so he’d know who he was betraying, so he’d know exactly who wasn’t coming to save him. And then I’d spread his legs out--”

“Jason, he’s trying to get you riled up,” Hazel says rapidly, coming to his side. She seizes his arm, the one holding the shield. “He’s doing it on purpose, don’t let him provoke you.”

“It’s pink, down there,” Bryce says. “Pink and all tender. Raw, by the time I was done. He has such a pretty face, your Nico. I loved seeing it between my legs.”

“It’s working,” Jason says through gritted teeth. “I’m riled.” 

He yanks his arm out of Hazel’s grip, and tears off Bryce’s chest plate with one hand, ready to pummel him until his insides are liquid.

But.

But then. 

And he sees.

And his brain shorts out.

And only Hazel has the presence of mind to take in the old-fashioned, cylinder explosives strapped to Bryce’s stomach and shout, “It’s a BOMB! Everybody _RUN_!”. 

The countdown reaches zero before Jason can collect himself; helplessly, he barks, “Hazel!” because it’ll take a miracle to save any of them at this point and she thrusts both hands upwards, sending Bryce hurtling into the air but not high enough, not fast enough, because he goes out with a bang halfway through the trip and the blast takes out both floors of the buildings on either side of him. 

Like huge Jenga towers, the buildings begin to collapse in on themselves, and Jason’s still on the ground staring.

Hazel, who’s always been one of the most levelheaded gals he knows, is chanting, “What have I done? What do I do? What have I done? What do I do?” over and over. 

The buildings crumble, people scream, and Jason just . . . watches.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _all I know is that Hazel has the Scarlet Witch’s powers and Frank is an android/ghost/thing and how they got like that will be glossed over entirely--that is my story and I'm sticking to it._

“--and, one month after the explosion in Lagos that left fifteen citizens and ten missionaries dead, the Wakandan government is still demanding retribution. Clarisse la Rue speaks for her people:

_‘For too long, the nations of the world have overlooked Wakanda. We’ve always been content to be left in peace, but if we continue to be ignored after such a grievous wrong was done to us, then we’ll be left with no choice. It is not our wish to wage war--we are not even asking for the punishment of the witch who committed the act. All we ask is that steps be taken to prevent her, and others, from doing this again.’_ ”

Percy switches off the television. 

“I was watching that,” Hazel objects from where she’s curled up on the sofa. She’s spent the last few weeks here, in the compound, instead of her house in Virginia, and while Percy doesn’t blame her for wanting to hide, he can’t help but feel like she’s wallowing.

Percy doesn’t do wallowing, even when he probably should.

“Look, they’ve been reporting on the same story for days,” he says, dropping down next to her. “If there was anything new to say, you would have heard it by now. There’s no point watching the same thing over and over again just to make yourself feel bad.”

She shoots him an irritated look, hugging a pillow to her chest. “I feel bad already. I don’t need a news program for that.”

“Exactly,” he says, spreading his hands wide in a _see what I mean?_ gesture. “You feel bad, Grace feels bad, everyone around here’s doing fucking penance for their crimes--no need to rub salt in the wound.”

Hazel shakes her head, maybe despairing for his morality, maybe marveling at his awesomeness. “Do you have a conscience at all?”

“I believe in moving forwards,” he counters. “Finding solutions for problems, not bemoaning their existence or my own shortcomings. Guilt is a good thing--as long as you use it as a motivator to do better next time.”

She doesn’t look like she believes him. “So . . . that’s how you explain away the whole Gaea thing?” she asks, cocking an eyebrow. “By saying, oh, well, I’ll just make sure to not accidentally create an android with a God complex next time around?”

Percy groans and flops back against the couch, his posture automatically worsening as he's faced with his worst nemesis--a mature and reasonable adult. 

“You sound like Rachel,” he complains. “I signed away my company to her, y’know. You’d think that would make her grateful, but nooooo.” He rubs his eyes. “Anyway, you’re right. It’s not really a matter of saying you’ll do better. But I’ve been trying to . . . I’ve been trying. Donated money. That sort of thing. Funded a crapload of MIT projects.”

Hazel snorts. “That’ll do a whole lot of good.”

“It’s a cause I believe in,” he defends himself. “And trust me--it feels a whole lot nicer than sitting on the couch watching endless repeats of the same news story.”

“You have your atonement,” she replies. “I have mine.” 

She reaches for the TV remote, and Percy stops her. He’s been trying to have this conversation with her for a week now, and he hasn’t been able to find the right time. Maybe now is--Jason and Leo are down in the rec room, “training” (Jason/Leospeak for “messing around and coming up with new ideas for finding Nico”), and Piper’s off-base, doing some kind of peace talks at the Vienna International Centre. There’s no one to disturb them.

“Hazel,” he says, her wrist in his hand. “In all seriousness--what happened in Lagos wasn’t your fault.”

“Really?” she asks sarcastically. “Must have been someone with my face who has my powers, then.”

“It was an accident,” he says firmly. “A real one, not the fuckup I had. You’re still learning to use your powers, powers we can’t even pinpoint the source of. It was my responsibility to monitor you, to make sure you were ready, and--” he shrugs. “I made a bad call. Again. I sent you out when I shouldn’t have, so anything you did is on me.”

“For someone who doesn’t want to drown in guilt,” she tells him, “you sure take on a lot of it.”

Percy prises the pillow out of her arms and laces his fingers through hers tightly. “Because I knew better, in both instances. I knew what I was doing was wrong and I made a conscious decision to do it anyway. And every choice I’ve made since then . . .”

He trails off. He didn’t mean to turn this into “Percy’s Pity Party”. 

“My point is, I got my start manufacturing weapons for terrorists,” he says. “Leo used to be a researcher for AIM. And you probably know more than I do about Piper and Annabeth’s shady beginnings. None of us started out the perfect specimens of humanity that we are now--we had to work for it.”

“Except Jason,” Hazel retorts wryly. 

“He got it easy,” Percy scoffs. “He just had to take a little ole’ magic potion.” He snorts, then sobers up. “But Jason’s had his share of ouches, too. And the truth is, he should have known Bryce was fronting to hide that bomb. He’s been trained, he has the experience: he just let himself get distracted.”

“You should have heard what that scumbag was saying about Nico, though,” she says, curling closer to him on the couch. She looks less sad than before, so Percy hopes he assuaged her guilt a little. “It was awful stuff. If anybody said things like that to me about someone I loved . . .” She shudders. “I can’t imagine.”

“Sticks and stones,” he mutters. It’s not like Grace is the only one to ever care about somebody in the history of the universe. World can't stop just because someone called Nico a bad name. 

But when Hazel shoots him a reproving look, he adds, “Yeah, yeah, I can see where he would have gotten upset. But honestly? Overreact much? You don’t catch him punching anyone out over my honor.”

“That’s because you don’t have any,” she replies, and a real, honest-to-goodness grin crosses her face. “Jason loves his friends like family, you know that. And the more they love him, the stronger his feelings for _them_ become. I think Jason must have hung the moon in Nico’s sky, back then, to see how they’re both behaving now.”

Percy makes a face. “Revolting. But how do you figure?”

“Well, I’ve been going over what info I can scrounge from the old SHIELD databases,” she explains. “The files we have on brainwashing and its effects. Unfortunately, the process Hydra used was kept secret--even in the organization, only a few men knew the technique. That made researching and countering it nearly impossible, and SHIELD had better things to do than free Hydra agents from mind control.”

“Even ones that were former agents of SHIELD,” he adds dryly.

“SHIELD wasn’t perfect,” Hazel allows, squeezing his hand. “But keep in mind, a lot of this took place in the early days. Other than the Winter Soldier, we have no evidence of brainwashing in Hydra since 1957. Once the Soviet Republic started experimenting with behavioral conditioning in the Cold War, Hydra dropped the idea. I don’t think they liked sharing their intel with the other kids on the block.”

“Who does?” Percy interjects.

“Anyway, from the records I have found, the conditioning is absolute,” she says. “That was the main problem in their research--once they altered the brain of their test subject, they couldn’t change it back. So, if they trained a soldier to kill everything in the room when he heard a certain bell tone, that was it. They couldn’t remove that reaction from his mind. For the rest of his life, he’d go on a killing spree when he heard that tone. But.”

“But,” he repeats. Why is there always a but?

“But, Nico overcame that somehow. He ignored the bell tone, so to speak, went against his own mental state, and saved Jason’s life. Despite his mind being unspeakably mangled, between the amnesia and the brainwashing, he figured out who Jason was, disobeyed orders he was bound to the marrow to follow, and went rogue.” Hazel shrugs. “It should be impossible, but he did it. That tells me that Jason’s more than just some old friend. He was important to Nico, important enough to not be forgotten completely.”

Before Percy can formulate a reply to that, and he’s not sure he’ll be able to, really, Frank ghosts into the room.

“The _door_ , Frank,” Hazel scolds at once.

Frank solidifies, glances at the door, then back to Hazel. “I can walk through walls,” he points out, as if that weren’t already obvious. “I can walk through walls and you want me to use a door?”

“Fanboy” Zhang hasn’t changed much, despite being killed, summoned into the body of an evil android, and kick-started back to life by the whatever-it-was that granted Hazel powers.

It’s been an eventful few months.

“She wants you to act like a human being,” Percy says tiredly. “As do we all. I, in particular, am getting sick of you drifting into the bathroom without knocking. It’s rude.”

“Sorry,” Frank apologizes, for about the millionth time today alone. “I’m still getting used to having these--and it’s just so cool, sometimes I forget--”

“It’s okay,” Hazel says, getting to her feet. “You have something to tell us?”

It’s scary, how good she is at predicting Frank’s motives when Percy has no idea what the hell is going on in that guy's brain.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “We have a visitor. Scary-looking guy in a suit, says he wants to see all of us . . . except Piper, I explained to him that she isn’t here. But Grover is. I was supposed to tell you he stopped in, Percy, but I forgot because I was making the trash compactor run with my mind, and Leo bet me five dollars that I couldn’t hit a--”

“Got it,” Percy interrupts. “Where’s this visitor?”

“The conference room. But Percy--”

Percy ignores him, heading out of the common room and into the hall. Hazel and Frank plod along behind him, a few paces back and discussing the appropriate usage of powers inside the compound. 

He’s glad to have the huge idiot back, he really is. But the former agent drives him insane with his sunny outlook in life. He’s the ghost in Percy’s machine, and for all any of them know, Gaea is about to crawl back out of wherever it’s locked away in Frank’s programmed subconscious and take over the A.I. again. He could stand to be a little more scared.

Like Percy. Feels like Percy’s afraid of fucking everything these days.

Of course, it’s debatable whether or not Frank still has feelings, so there’s that.

Still mulling over the issue, Percy heads into the conference room to find Jason and Leo already seated there. His old friend, Grover, is leaning against the far wall, looking a little uncomfortable. Percy can’t remember him ever stepping foot in the compound, or in the mansion before that. He’s not even sure that Grover’s met the entire team, for all that Percy talks about them. 

Hazel and Frank slip in and take seats on opposite sides of the table, and Percy sits down next to Hazel, across from Jason. 

Standing at the head of the table is, as Frank described him, a scary-looking man in a suit. His brown hair is slicked back like a gangster’s, the curly ends brushing the collar of his lilac shirt, and he’s wearing sunglasses. Inside. Not even Percy does that; well, not unless he’s really hungover. 

Percy, unfortunately, recognizes him as Hermes, the Secretary of State.

“We must be in real trouble,” he groans, ignoring the look that Jason shoots him. Jason can fall over himself and die being polite to bureaucrats; but this is Percy’s compound and he doesn’t have to be nice to anyone he doesn’t want to. “They sent the babysitter.”

“Jackson,” the Secretary says, whipping off his sunglasses. This isn’t exactly a sign of respect; Percy gets the feeling it’s more to show off the man’s unsettling eyes, which are the same shade as blue raspberry lemonade. “I’d say it’s a pleasure, but it’s really not.”

“Aw, but we had so much fun last time,” Percy coos. “You telling me to stop acting as Iron Man, me telling you to go fuck yourself . . . and let’s not mention how you seduced my best friend to the Dark Side and made him some kind of walking, shooting, douchebaggy PSA.”

“Percy,” Grover says at once, pushing off from the wall. That’s all he says, but Percy can hear everything else his friend wants to express, most of it fitting neatly under the header of You Can Shut Up Now. 

“I didn’t want to come here,” Hermes tells him. “I said, let ‘em burn, they deserve what they’re going to get. But Apollo wanted me to warn you, and I owe him a favor, so. Here I am.”

“Warn us?” Hazel asks, worried.

Hermes smirks. It isn’t a good look on him. He opens his leather briefcase (Percy’s never seen him without it) and pulls out a thick stack of papers, held together by several huge binder clips. When he drops it on the table in front of Jason, the stack makes an audible thump.

Jason leans forwards, lifting the cover page tentatively. Even upside-down, Percy can clearly read the 14-pt heading: _The Sokovia Accords_.

“What’s that?” Frank asks, edging closer to Jason in order to read over his shoulder. “The Sokovia . . . ?” 

“Accords,” Hazel completes. “Fancy word for a treaty. It usually involves a set of rules that all involved parties are expected to follow.”

“Smart girl,” Hermes observes.

“Fascinating as this is,” Percy says, “Can someone tell me exactly _what_ this is?”

Hermes rolls his eyes, which shouldn’t be allowed in government officials. “You’re supposed to be smart, Jackson. You figure it out. After what happened in Sokovia, the United Nation’s had enough. Your stunt in Lagos just served to speed up their agreements.”

Jason, who’s already scanned the entire introduction, says, “They’re trying to control us, Perce.”

“Trust me, this is their generous offer,” Hermes says. “You don’t want to see the first five drafts.” 

He snaps his briefcase shut and slides it off the table. “Well, as much as I’ve enjoyed this, my duty is now done,” he announces. “Go ahead and review that pretty little document; it’s going to be your Bible for the rest of your sorry and, hopefully, short-lived careers.”

“What if we don’t agree with these?” Jason objects.

Hermes gives his first real smile since Percy stepped into the room. “Do you really think we’d present these to you if refusing was an option?” he asks.

Jason cracks his knuckles, but Hermes just laughs as if his puppy was trying to drag him by the pant leg and leaves the room. 

“Don’t sweat it,” he tosses over his shoulder. “I’ll see myself out.”

Which leaves the six of them, staring at the Accords like it’s about to blow up in their faces.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the Piper and Clarisse bromance is real, guys.

“I’m okay,” Piper insists, shuffling out of her hotel room with her keycard in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Her blueberry-muffin breakfast is churning in her stomach, but she dismisses the nerves without a second thought. Yeah, she’s nervous. She’ll get over it.

“You don’t sound okay,” Annabeth, on the other side of the phone line, says. Piper can clearly hear a baby crying in the background; Annabeth’s father recently welcomed another child into their already-bursting-at-the-seams farmhouse. 

“I’m out of breath,” Piper replies. “That’s all.”

“Because you regularly get out of breath,” the archer says sarcastically. “Right. I forgot. That happens to you international-super-spies all the time.”

“ _You_ got me out of breath just fine,” Piper retorts, before she can think better of it, and the awkward silence that follows is almost--almost--enough for her to relent and confess that she’s worried about the peace talks this morning. 

But she decides it’s better to endure post-flirting mortification than admit to having feelings. 

“You need to stop that,” Annabeth finally says.

“I’m sorry, it’s a habit--” 

“I mean, covering up what you really feel with sarcasm and innuendo,” Annabeth interrupts.

Piper lets that stand as she does a minor juggling act in order to push the Down button on the elevator, then asks innocently, “Like you do, you mean?”

“I learned from the best,” Annabeth shoots back. “Look, it doesn’t have to be me, and it doesn’t have to be now, but somewhere along the line you’re going to have to be honest. For once in your life.”

“You took that from a movie,” Piper accuses. “Probably something from Hallmark, right?” 

Annabeth sighs. “Clearly, today is not that day.”

“Annie, sweetheart,” Piper says, “I’d love to discuss my issues with you. I’d love to go over, for the thousandth millionth gazillionth time, why we broke up. But I’m a little busy preparing myself for an international peace conference that could end with all of us in jail, so I think I’ll pass on the heartfelt confessions just this once. Ciao.”

She snaps her phone shut just as the elevator doors open. Perfect timing.

She doesn’t know why Annabeth’s always on her case about opening up. The archer should know why that’s dangerous; one of the reasons Piper went into a relationship with her was because she figured Annie would understand the need for secrecy, for caution. Nothing extreme; Piper told Jason about the whole thing, after all, so it didn’t have to be this big secret; just a little bit of common sense.

Posting “In A Relationship With Black Widow” on Facebook?

Not common sense.

“What floor?” the girl inside the elevator asks Piper, and Piper does a double take.

Clarisse la Rue, both ambassador and princess to her people, is standing there, in a pair of ratty flip flops and a bandanna that looks like it once saw the Stone Age. Clearly someone attempted to dress her up, since her faded t-shirt is covered by a jarringly new-looking suit jacket, and her jeans have the wet marks of the recently spot-cleaned, but for the most part she still looks like she does in all of her news interviews; grungy, tough, and vaguely pissed off at the world. 

“What floor?” she repeats, more insistently. 

“Ground,” Piper spits out, and Clarisse grunts acknowledgment. The elevator doors slide closed. 

Piper wonders, randomly and a little bit desperately, when hotels did away with elevator music. Because even though they just met, it feels really, really tense in here.

“I know who you are,” Clarisse says.

“Likewise,” Piper replies. She glances sideways at Clarisse, wondering if the girl is about to fly off the handle. She seems like the type, especially after all of those news programs broadcasting her badly veiled threats towards the Avengers.

To her surprise, Clarisse offers a tentative smile. “Thank you,” she says. “I appreciate a member of the Avengers coming in person, rather than sending an emissary. I respect a person who fights their own battles.”

Piper allows herself to smile back. “Your thanks are welcome,” she replies formally, never more grateful than this second for the manners drilled into her since childhood. _A spy, an assassin, and a mercenary all have one thing in common_ , she recites in her mind, the edict often delivered to her by Lupa. _The ability to blend in to any social setting. People are your greatest weapons, child. Use them._

So now, Piper tries to take advantage of Clarisse’s seemingly good disposition towards her. “Your presence speaks highly of you, as well,” she declares. “And, before the meeting, I’d like to personally apologize for the massacre in Lagos.”

Clarisse is silent for a moment, leaving Piper to wonder if she misspoke, but then the princess says, sounding a lot less formal, “Do you know what they keep calling it, on your news stations and in our papers? A tragedy. Or an ‘accident’. Sometimes an incident. Or else they reference the explosion and add, almost as an afterthought, the number of lives lost.” She pauses. “No one, until you, has dared say outright what it really was. A massacre.”

“People don’t like to see ugly things,” Piper says. “They think they’ll heal if they just ignore it.”

Clarisse gives her another smile. “I find I like you, Black Widow. Perhaps after all of this, you would like to join my guard.”

“Perhaps,” Piper allows, though she can’t see herself moving to Wakanda anytime soon. She doesn’t want to outright snub the offer, though; Clarisse seems genuine.

The elevator dings itself open, revealing that a girl--even younger than Clarisse--is waiting for them, arms folded, blue-gray eyes narrowed in exasperation.

“And just where were you?” she demands, lunging forwards and seizing Clarisse by the forearm. “I told you to be in the lobby by eight a.m.--it’s nearly nine! I knew we should have booked a suite; obviously I need to keep an eye on you.”

Clarisse looks towards Piper, a different kind of smile playing over her face. It looks uncannily like the one Annabeth used to adopt when she felt Piper was being endearing. “My bodyguard, Miss Silena Beauregard,” she introduces, gesturing towards the dark-haired girl. 

Piper nods a greeting. 

“We’re going to be late for the meeting,” the bodyguard says, still scolding her mistress. “How would that look, you arriving late to your own peace conference? Not very respectful, that’s how.”

“You’ll have to forgive her,” Clarisse says, as Silena drags her through the lobby, Piper trailing behind them. “She’s known me since childhood, and she thinks that makes her my mother.”

“Someone has to look out for you,” Silena declares, without breaking stride. “You’re obviously terrible at doing it for yourself.”

Clarisse shoots Piper a look that clearly says, You see what I mean?, and Piper has to bite back a laugh. The slight awkwardness from earlier has evaporated. Silena and Clarisse good-naturedly go back and forth, and it’s easy to get caught up in their flow--it feels natural for Piper to slide into the back of the Jag with Clarisse, even though she wasn’t invited.

Clarisse sprawls in the car, taking up two seats, and kicks her flip flops off. “So,” she says, as Silena gets into the driver’s seat. “Should we expect full Avenger cooperation in the matter of the Accords, or will there be . . . trouble?”

“If you’re worried about Hazel, she feels responsible for what happened,” Piper says. “She’ll want to make amends in whatever way possible. The others . . . I can’t say. Percy’s ambivalent, Frank makes decisions based on processing systems that have, to say the least, questionable criteria, and Jason--” 

Jason will probably, if he’s in a good mood, flip a few tables and scream a hearty _HELL NO!!_ to the world in general when he learns of the Accords, which should be--Piper checks her watch--about fifteen minutes from now. 

“--is harder to pin down,” Piper finally settles on. “But he’s a soldier. He’s used to following orders, so maybe this will be nothing to him.”

She can hear the lie in her own words. The idea of Jason following orders is laughable. Jason rebelled against the U.S. Army’s plans for him, hated SHIELD’s need-to-know policy, and just generally resents being told what to do. He always has his own idea for how a situation should go, which makes him a fantastic leader and a terrible diplomat.

And Jason, right now, isn’t in the mood to be overseen by another organization of bureaucrats. Piper can’t say she blames him; she’s wary, too. But what Jason never could understand, and Piper always has, is that some situations can’t be changed by faith and strong moral fiber. Some situations just have to be borne until they pass. 

They aren’t going to get out of this unscathed if Jason refuses the Accords, and so, for all of their sakes, Piper prays that her words become true; that Jason, for once, surrenders the control and responsibility he so fiercely clings to.

But she knows he won’t, because if he did, he wouldn’t be Captain America.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _now playing: Jason vs. Percy, while Hazel mediates, Frank unhelpfully talks about sleep, and Grover fades into the wallpaper._

Jason’s read the damned thing three times already, and he still doesn’t like it. 

Maybe he’d be more open to the idea if it had been proposed to him six years ago, when he still had faith in human governments, when the notion of the American Dream was a real concept to him and not a slogan plastered on amusement park billboards; maybe if he’d been asked to approve of this thinly veiled cease and desist order before he met Percy, the billionaire who uses money as an acceptable solution to all problems, and Piper, whose moral compass floats in the wind, and Leo, who lost everything he had to a military operation gone wrong. 

Or, he considers, maybe the person proposing the Accords would have to go back even farther than that and catch Jason before his orders landed him in a helicopter over the Arctic (the last place he saw Nico alive and whole), or before the long months he searched frantically for Nico, eating beef jerky and cold hash and watching his men get gunned down or frostbitten or go mad. No, he thinks, anyone who wanted him to agree to this totalitarian control of power would have to retreat to the moment before Mr. Jackson jammed a syringe into Jason Grace’s bony shoulder and turned him from half a man into a god. 

Perhaps then, he would have agreed to hand over his soul, tax-free, no questions asked.

But far too much has happened to Jason since then, and he has serious doubts about this now. 

Treaties can be negotiated, though. Agreements can be amended; if this is truly a set of accords between two parties, the U.N. and the Avengers, then both sides will have a say in the final draft of the matter. Restrictions can be altered, allowances made for exceptions and emergencies and the bottom line is, he’s not saying “no”. 

He’s just saying this is a bad idea.

Apparently, he’s the only one saying that though.

“Hermes is an ass,” Percy says, “but he has a point. There’s no way we can refuse--it’ll be a clear Fuck You to the U.N. and, by extension, the world.”

“It doesn’t seem so bad,” Hazel volunteers, rifling through the first few pages. “Especially considering the alternative.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Jason asks. “Are they really going to go against us?”

Percy leans back in his chair, arching an eyebrow. “Do you hear yourself right now?”

“We’d accept the Accords as a sign of our good intentions,” Frank says. “They know full well that, if we decided to fight them, there wouldn’t be much they could do. This is more a political play than an act of repression; if we refuse to agree, then we’ll be portrayed as dangerous anarchists, and tip our already precarious social position.”

“I don’t like being backed into a corner,” Jason observes. “Makes me feel like this isn’t really a choice.”

“Because it isn’t,” Percy says. “Have you seen the news, Jase? They’ve started totaling the number of deaths since we started our operations; current estimates have the mortality rate in America alone up by twenty-five percent.” 

He spreads his hands out wide. “Is it the ozone layer? The End Times? A sign of rapid moral degradation? Or is it us, the almighty Avengers, being ever-so-helpful? You need more evidence, how about this--since the dissolution of SHIELD, our death toll has doubled. Doubled. We clearly need a leash, Cap.”

“A leash, not a noose,” Jason retorts. “Some of these points are worrying--like this one.” He takes the Accords from Hazel, flips a few pages in, and reads, “The Avengers will be mobilized by the United Nations when, and only when, the U.N. deems action necessary. Avengers are not to act unless ordered to by the U.N.; any action independent of United Nations ruling will be deemed an act of terrorism.” He lets the pages fall shut. “So, say I happen to see a purse snatcher on the street and stop him from committing his crime. Now I’m a terrorist?”

“I’m sure that’s not the spirit of the agreement,” Percy says, but Hazel looks troubled. 

“Look, I started doing this because I wanted to help people,” Jason tells them. “If you can guarantee that signing these Accords won’t change anything we’re doing now, then fine. I’ll put my huge John Hancock wherever they want it.”

“Did that sound like an innuendo to anyone else?” Leo pipes up. Jason glares at him, and Percy grins. 

“Percy is right,” Frank says. “Whether a leash or a noose, we need an outside force directing our actions. We can’t see the big picture when we’re standing in the middle of the battlefield.” 

He sounds uncannily like Reyna, the former Director of SHIELD.

“An outside force that knows nothing about this life?” Jason demands. “A board of bureaucrats who aren’t even from our country? Is that the kind of direction we need?”

“And now he’s going all ‘Aryan race’ on us,” Percy groans. 

“What?” Jason snaps. “What the fuck did you just say?”

“Comparing the World War Two vet to Adolf Hitler,” Leo says, and begins to slowly clap. “Jackson, you have got serious balls. You’re about to die, but you’ve got balls.”

“Can we at least attempt to leave large genitals out of this debate?” Hazel scolds, shaking her finger at him from across the table. “There’s a lady present.”

“Oh, my bad,” he retorts, and tips an imaginary hat at Frank. “Sorry, Frank. Didn’t mean to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

Hazel grits her teeth, and red lights spark the ends of Leo’s hair. He’s remarkably unbothered. 

“I’ve had just about enough of your attitude,” Jason growls at Percy, getting to his feet and bearing down on the table. Sometimes he swears the guy exists solely to be a thorn in his side.

Percy mimics the pose, bringing their faces a scant few inches apart. “Is that so, Cap? My attitude is bothering you? Well, Mr. Miliary Man, let me demonstrate what’s been bothering me, and then maybe you’ll be a little more fucking reasonable.”

He pulls away, taking his Jacktech phone from his jeans’ pocket. Flicking it on, he projects a holographic screen onto the far wall of the conference room, left blank for this exact purpose.

On the screen is a picture of a family; father, mother, grandfather, son.

“Meet the Rodriguez family,” Percy says. The name rings a bell in Jason’s mind, but he can’t remember where he’s heard it before. “Perfectly normal. Very happy. They’d just moved to Sokovia, about a month before we showed up. They evacuated the city like good little countrymen when we sent out our warning call--and got caught in the rain of rubble as Gaea levitated the city. All four of them were crushed.”

“That wasn’t our--” Jason begins, and Percy snaps his phone, changing the picture. 

“Charles Beckendorf,” he announces, gesturing to the college-aged kid grinning down at them from an MIT student ID card. “Three credits away from his degree, he took a late gap year to volunteer. Nothing special; I did that, Leo did it, I’m sure you would have, Cap, if you’d had an education past sixth grade.”

Jason doesn’t dignify that. He didn’t quit school until eighth, anyway. He didn’t have anything but his brain, so he used to work hard at it. But Percy wouldn’t know that; that would require him actually caring. 

“It looks good on job applications,” Percy goes on. “So, me, I went to Vegas. Leo came to America. And our good student Charlie, here--” he flicks the phone again, and the image switches to an obituary. “--died doing relief work in Lagos, along with his new friends from Wakanda, and sixteen ordinary citizens.”

He switches the holoscreen off. “So, forgive me if I have a bad attitude, Jason. But this isn’t just a numbers game--real people are dying. Because of us, because of me. Because I can’t make good decisions and all you care about is Nico.”

“Hey--” Jason bristles.

“Piper’s morally ambiguous, Hazel’s organized but not much of a think-for-herselfer, and Frank’s . . . well, Frank’s a fanboy and I’m not sure what his purpose is here,” Percy says. “Leo’s only interest in this team is you, Jason, and Grover--” he shrugs. “Sorry, man, but you’re so busy being Sky Cop that you aren’t really an Avenger to begin with. We’re doing more harm than good like this.”

“I refuse to believe that,” Jason says. “It sounds to me like you just want to pass the blame on to someone else, Perce. Like you can’t own up to your own mistakes.”

“I am owning up to my mistakes,” Percy retorts. “By admitting that I’m not fit to lead this team, and neither are you, or Piper, or Hazel, or any of the rest of you.”

“If you can’t handle the guilt anymore, then just retire,” Jason shoots back. “Don’t force your penance onto us.”

“As far as I can tell, you’re the only one being forced,” Percy says. “Everyone else sees that this is necessary.”

“The more you talk, the less inclined I feel to agree,” Jason tells him.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Hazel announces, standing. “You two could fight for hours over whether or not brown socks go with black pants--this isn’t going to solve a thing. I suggest we all sleep on the idea and reconvene tomorrow. We haven’t been contacted directly by the U.N. regarding the Accords yet, so it’s safe to assume we don’t need to reach a decision right this second.”

“Several studies have shown that sleep is crucial to the decision making process,” Frank adds, and Hazel takes him by the arm, leading him out of the room as he continues to regale her with information about sleep. 

Leo stretches, yawning even though it’s just three in the afternoon, and looks at Jason, who’s still glaring at Percy. “Up for a board game, bro?”

“Later,” Jason replies. “I want to talk to Percy.”

Leo scampers out, and Grover hovers by the door. Percy waves him off, then turns to Jason. “What? You have something to say that the rest of the team can’t hear?”

Jason closes the door. “Kind of. It’s personal.”

“What do you want?” Percy replies. 

“I overheard you earlier, explaining to Hazel that what happened in Lagos wasn’t her fault,” Jason confesses. “And it sounded like what you wanted to say was that it was mine.”

Percy holds his gaze for a moment, his green eyes darkening. “Is that so?” he asks cryptically. 

“Cut the bullshit, Jackson,” Jason replies. “You think I haven’t been around for the past few months? That I haven’t noticed you slipping little digs in about Nico every few hours? I’d expect that kind of thing from Piper, not you.”

Piper came around to the idea of Nico, but slowly. Unfortunately, it seems that Percy took her place as the Winter Soldier’s biggest critic. For reasons Jason can’t begin to understand, Percy resents the place Nico holds in Jason’s life, and he makes it blindingly obvious. 

“Fun story,” Percy announces. “True story, actually. So, you know that my father basically sucked as a dad.”

It isn’t a question, but Jason nods.

“Yup, so I was raised mostly by Mom, which was fine, and Dad’s friend . . . let’s call him Hades.”

“What is this, a Greek tragedy?” Jason jokes. 

Percy’s face doesn’t budge from its serious expression. “Sort of. I loved that guy, Jason. He wasn’t this warm, fuzzy person, but he liked to--I _thought_ he liked to have me around, which was more than could be said for Dad. I trusted him, and he rewarded me with my first job in the company. It was only with his advice that I didn’t run the place into the ground after my parents died.”

Jason’s never heard Percy speak so frankly about his past; it’s always been in lighthearted quips that may or may not be true, or else alluded to briefly before he changes the subject to other things. Jason's never liked to ask about it, either. He doesn't like the look Percy gets on his face when he does.

“And then I found myself in the Middle East, with a hole where I used to have a heart, and I realized that I’d put my faith in the wrong person,” Percy completes. “I lost my entire life because I trusted Hades. I don’t want you to go through anything like that. Growing up with someone doesn’t mean they’re good, or honest, or won’t screw you over. I like your heart, Jase. I don’t want you to lose it.”

“Metaphorically or literally?” Jason asks, and then grins. “Kidding. See? I’m smiling at you--I’m not mad.”

Percy hems and haws for a moment, then sticks his tongue out. “Dick.”

“Jackass.” Jason cuffs him, and they tussle for a second. Jason thinks they must be okay again as Percy reaches up to tickle his ears--his soft spot--and he tears his fingers through the other man's hair, mussing the gel.

Then Leo bangs and clatters back into the room, throwing the door open so widely and so quickly that it slams into the far wall. He crashes into the conference table, catches himself, and turns to Jason, who releases Percy at once.

“What the hell’s the matter?” Percy demands.

“The U.N. building in Vienna,” Leo pants, reaching out to grip Jason’s forearm. His eyes are huge. “It--it was bombed ten minutes ago. Security footage shows it was Nico. I’m--I’m sorry, Jason. It doesn’t look good.”

Jason glances up in time to see Percy with his smugest _I-told-you-so_ expression firmly in place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I've said this yet, so--  
> THANK YOU GUYS SOOOOO MUCH! Each and every review and kudo and view means the world to me!!! I can't say this is my first rodeo but transitioning from Fanfiction.net to AO3 was hard and having your feedback keeps me motivated! But, y'all probably go through the same thing with your own writing so this is nothing new . . . ;) xoxo let's keep Jasico alive!!! Thank you for indulging my madness!
> 
>  
> 
> (but author still vehemently ships Solangelo so.)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _and now back to Piper_

Piper’s ears are ringing.

She can’t remember what happened for a second, her stunned mind coming back, again and again, to the same three words: _it went bang it went bang it went bang_. She must have lost consciousness for a few seconds, because that’s the only time she becomes completely unable to order her thoughts like this. 

Her pulse is roaring through her ears, painful in its intensity, and as she gradually begins to take in more outside information, she realizes that some of the pain must be coming from the heavy pressure on her back. 

There’s a reddened, soot-streaked face barely an inch from hers; at the close range, it takes her a moment, but then she recognizes--

“Clarisse?” Her voice is hoarse. Not a good sign.

She has a flash of the ambassador throwing herself over Piper, which is laughable because Piper’s been exploded at more times than she can count and it almost doesn’t bother her anymore, and another of screaming.

There’s no screams now, just smoke, and a few moans of pain, and then Piper is back in full force.

Bomb. Some kind of bomb went off in the Vienna International Center during this highly publicized summit for peace.

Piper can still feel the notecard prompts for the speech she never got to give, pressed against her side. 

Clarisse coughs, right in Piper’s ear, her body bucking and tensing. “Ah--” she bite back a sound of pain.

“Are you okay?” Piper asks at once.

“Yes. You?” 

“Once you get off me, I’ll be fine.”

Clarisse rolls away, grumbling, “A thank-you would be in order. Rude Americans.”

“I’m not American,” Piper mutters, and gets to her feet.

Around them, the meeting room is in ruins. The bomb originated, as far as Piper can tell, from outside, blasting through the series of glass windows behind the speaking platform. The emissaries and diplomats closest to the windows are all cowering under their desks, or else thrown backwards into the seats of those behind them. No one seems to be seriously injured, or so Piper assumes until--

“ _SILENA_!” 

Clarisse’s scream, ten times rougher than Piper’s rasp, cuts through the stunned silence in the room as the princess hurtles towards the body lying directly in front of the speaking platform, little more than a mass of dark hair and torn skin.

Piper’s seen a lot of bad things in her time. She’s seen wars, both the kind that make the news and the kind that don’t, and cold-blooded murders. She’s committed a few of those herself, not that she’d ever admit to the blood on her hands. She’s seen Jason’s face after he found out Nico was alive, and Hazel’s after she found out Frank was dead.

And more, things she’s gotten good at not remembering, red on the sheets of a hotel bed, and the pain that curdled in her abdomen at that time; the screams of a girl whose flesh had been completely charred from her body, nothing left but muscle and bone, and yet somehow she still lived; red, so much red, like a terrible metaphor, or maybe it’s a plot device.

Annie, rolling away from her in that narrow cot on Base Nine, whispering, “This is _so_ not a good idea”, Annie, walking away. Coming back. Leaving again. Her expression the same every time, the one that clearly says she has no hope for Piper’s salvation, no illusions about the terrible person she’s involved with.

Piper’s seen a lot, to the point where some days she wonders if she even feels it anymore.

Watching Clarisse seize her bodyguard, try to breathe life back into her before realizing there’s nothing there to revive, cling to that body despite the paramedics that eventually--after eons and eons--come to give relief, Piper feels it. Clarisse’s grief rips into her like it’s her own.

Piper lets them shepherd her out of the building and onto a nearby park bench. A medic assesses her briefly, then seems to shuffle her into the category of Fine With A Little Rest and goes on to tend to the more hysteric members of the council, who have seen considerably less action than Russian-trained international spies.

It takes a good minute and a half for her to realize her phone is ringing. 

“Hello?” 

“Thank God,” Jason groans, his voice as loud in her ear as if he’s standing right next to her. “Do you have any idea how worried we were?”

“Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not dead,” she replies lightly. 

“They’re saying it was Nico, that he’s acting as the Winter Soldier,” Jason says anxiously. “There’s footage--I’ve seen it. It looks incriminating.”

“Are you saying he didn’t do it?” she replies, inwardly groaning. If they’re about to embark on another crusade to save Nico di Angelo’s soul, she’s going to flip the fuck out. She’s had enough of that nonsense to last a lifetime.

“No,” he relents. “It was his face on that tape. I just--if he’s acting as the Soldier again, Pipes . . .”

“No,” she tells him firmly. “Do you hear me, Jason? No. We’re already under scrutiny for the Sokovia and Lagos incidents, and this bombing is only going to add fuel to that fire. This is not the time to resume your personal crusade.”

“He’ll fight anyone who comes after him,” Jason says. “Whether he’s innocent or guilty, he’ll fight them.”

“And he won’t fight you?” She tries to reason with him, she really does. But reasoning with Jason is like squeezing toothpaste back into the bottle--it can be done, but the result is rarely worth the time and effort. 

“If he’s innocent, he won’t,” he says. “And if he’s being controlled . . . I stand a better chance than anyone else.”

“You didn’t stop him before,” she points out.

“That was different.” Jason pauses as someone--sounds like Leo--says something muffled in the background. “Reyna told me that I couldn’t deal with Nico because I wasn’t dealing just with Nico. I let all of this other stuff--you and Leo, Bryce, Hydra within SHIELD--distract me. She said if I really want to help him, I have to give it everything I’ve got. No more worrying about consequences. No more fighting for the greater good.”

“And you think you can do that this time?” she asks, skeptical. She knows he must have already made up his mind, that he probably made it up some time ago, but she likes to poke holes in him just for the sake of it. God knows the guy needs someone who doesn’t idolize him completely. 

Jason doesn’t reply, and she gives one last effort to the Save Jason From Himself cause. 

“Don’t get involved, Cap,” she begs. “Please. Let anyone else deal with this, okay?” 

“I’ll talk to you later,” he says. “I’m glad you’re safe. Love you. Bye.”

The bastard, he doesn’t even give her time to return the sentiment. 

“Damn fool,” she growls, sticking her phone back into her pocket.

Clarisse, wrapped in a neon orange emergency blanket, sits on the bench next to her, and Piper immediately forgets about her short conversation with Jason.

“Hey,” she says. “How--” She stops. Asking “how are you?” is probably not the best course of action. 

“Nico di Angelo, huh?” Clarisse asks, and Piper winces. 

“Nothing concrete--” she begins. 

“The Winter Soldier killed my best friend,” the Wakandan princess declares tightly. “Don’t hide things from me.”

“It looks like it was him,” Piper admits. Any ease she felt around Clarisse is gone; the ambassador is coiled as tightly as a snake about to strike, and the slightly-pissed expression she sported before is nothing compared the cold, clear fury in her eyes now. 

“And your forces are bringing him to justice?” Clarisse demands. “The Avengers are hunting him down?”

Piper stalls. “I’m--not sure--”

“Someone had better bring him in,” the Wakandan says. “Or else we will have to resort to . . . more creative . . . methods of punishment.”

Piper’s seen a lot of things. She’s been in a lot of wars, both the kind that make the news and the kind that don’t. It takes a lot to spook her, but the look on Clarisse’s face is enough to send a shiver down her spine. She doesn’t have the kind of faith Jason does, but she prays nevetheless; _Jason, be careful. And for Jason’s sake, Nico, be safe._


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _this is a scene that was never in Civil War. I’m pretty sure there was no signing-the-Accords scene to a) emphasize that Steve didn’t care about them and b) point out that the Accords were basically irrelevant to the movie, but I have no such subtlety. I need Jason to dramatically throw down his pen and refuse, dammit._

Jason pulls his baseball cap further down over his eyes, buffeted by reporters on all sides. This is the part of being Captain America that he’s never liked; the publicity, the delicate social play, the farces he must put up in order to stay a liked and respected citizen. He can’t tell the media to fuck off, even if that’s what he feels like doing after a week of sleepless nights and a morning of bad coffee and Percy reminding him, again, that he’d ‘better fucking show up to sign the Accords’ or else there would be hell to pay. 

It’s even worse here, in the twenty-first century, than it was in the newsreel days. Here, with the internet’s all-seeing and far-reaching eyes, Jason’s every move can be shared and recorded. Here, privacy is nothing but an illusion. 

They want him on Facebook, they want him on Twitter. They want him on every vlogger’s webpage conducting stupid interviews; to see his heart and his brain and all of the parts that make him himself--they want to see him carpooling with a pop star on SNL. And none of that is Jason. 

Jason isn’t half as interesting as all that, and he doesn’t want to be. He wishes he could sit the entire world down and explain to them, carefully and clearly, that he’s a simple fellow with a simple mission. He doesn’t have deep desires or hidden talents. He has no love for the public eye, and never has. He wants a free world, a safe place to live, and Nico. 

But professing his near-obsession with his possibly evil childhood friend is not the way to improve public opinion, and right now Jason isn’t exactly popular with the masses, so he refrains from making the situation any worse as he wades through the clutch of reporters gathered at the U.N. Headquarters in New York. 

The questions blur together in a roar, so that he can only pick out a few at a time, and can’t pinpoint their source at all. 

“--going to do about Nico di Angelo, Mr. Grace?”

“Captain, is it true that the Winter Soldier underwent the same treatment as you in the 1940s?”

“It’s been nearly six months since the Gaea threat and Magnus Chase is yet to show his face--is his absence a sign of Asgardian abandonment of Earth?”

“Will you be signing the Accords, despite its clear violation of your personal rights, Mr. Grace?”

Jason steamrolls his way into the building, the last question lodging itself in his head as he does so. A violation of personal rights? As many times as he’s turned the Sokovia Accords over in his mind, he’s never thought of it that way. In fact, he can’t remember the last time he thought of himself as an individual with rights at all. He gave that up when he started acting like he was above the law. 

Percy’s in the foyer, dressed up in the sense that his shirt looks like it was ironed and he’s wearing loafers instead of sneakers. He snaps off his sunglasses, swirling the ice in his Mochachillo. “You came,” he states. “You could have gotten a ride with me.”

“I wanted to take the bike,” Jason replies. Also, he doesn’t think he’d be able to stand being trapped in a vehicle with Percy for an hour. Not this week, anyway. 

The resulting expression on Percy’s face takes him by surprise. 

“You didn’t think I’d actually show,” Jason guesses. 

Percy shrugs. “You have a track record of skipping pesky political functions. Figured you’d have Piper forge your signature or something.”

Jason snorts. “You think so highly of me.”

“Just returning the favor.” Percy drops his coffee into a nearby potted plant. “Shall we go up?”

The U.N. building is pretty impressive, but it’s nothing compared to the Triskelion, which Jason misses as they step out of the elevator and onto the third floor. The Triskelion’s atmosphere was, against all odds, friendlier than the aura hovering around this place. Jason can feel the looks, ranging from curious to furious, like a dozen needles pricking his arms and back as the two of them head for the main conference room. Captain America is not popular here. He probably isn’t even welcome.

Jason gives himself a slight break when he remembers that Percy is with him, and it could very well be Jackson attracting the glares--the fellow has turned being dislikable into an art form. 

They’re all signing; Hazel and Frank, Piper, Percy and Grover, even Annabeth. From the minute the idea of the Accords was introduced, it was as though it was never a question that they’d comply. 

Percy catches his hand before he can open the conference room door. “Grace.”

“What?” Jason asks, impatient. He wants to get this over with. 

“I give you shit about a lot of things, I know,” Percy says, clenching Jason’s fingers tightly. Jason can feel the repulsor conductor nested in Percy’s palm, as always buzzing with a slight electric charge. He wonders if it’s a threat. “But I wanted you to know, what you’re doing today? It’s the right thing. So . . . thank you. For not making this hard.”

Jason slips his hand from Percy’s. “It’s hard, Jackson,” he declares. “Don’t think for a fucking second this isn’t hard for me. I just haven’t been given another choice.”

He yanks the door open, and they enter the room.

Piper comes to his side at once, followed closely by Leo. Jason has to suppress a smile at their eagerness; he’s missed them, too. Between the incident in Lagos and the bombing in Vienna, he hasn’t seen his friends much. He hasn’t seen anyone much--he’s been too busy jetting here and there, trying to mend bridges and smooth delegates’ ruffled feathers. 

Gathered around the large, round table that takes up most of the room is not a group of U.N. representatives, as Jason expected, but a collection of people, some that he knows and some that are strangers. Hermes is there, along with Apollo, head of the CIA. Next to them is an--for lack of a more appropriate word--obese man in a gaudy, floral-patterned shirt, a badly fitting toupee plastered to his head. Six men in identical sunglasses and suits, who might be brothers or sextuplets or entirely unrelated, occupy the next chairs, and rounding out the group is one of Jason’s old friends, Dr. Will Solace, former member of the Directorate.

“You’re late,” Hermes says, and Jason reflexively checks his watch.

“They’re five minutes early,” Hazel corrects, and rolls her eyes. “Reyna was right--you lot are a bunch of incompetent fools.”

Hermes makes a disgusted noise. 

Jason, Piper, and Leo take seats as far away from the strangers as possible, and the others fill in around them. In the center of the table is a set of fountain pens in a velvet box, and the Accords. 

There’s a nasty feeling in the pit of Jason’s stomach--he doesn’t trust the government, doesn’t trust _any_ government, and he strongly believes that he’s making a mistake by being here. But Percy made it clear to him this morning, as Hermes made it clear last week, that this is the United Nations’ warning shot. If any Avenger doesn’t sign, it’ll be seen as an act of terrorism.

“Introductions?” Hermes suggests, after they’ve settled in. “You all know Apollo--” The CIA head is obviously off in some other world, head bobbing to whatever’s pumping through his earbuds, “--and these are our associates, Mr. D and the Argus Collective. Our Head of Defense, Chiron, couldn’t make it, I’m afraid. And you know Mr. Solace.”

“Our? What’s with all this ‘our’ I’m hearing?” Leo asks. 

Hermes smirks. It’s no less unsettling than it was a week ago. “Well, Mr. Valdez, we are the heads of the Counter-Terrorism Task Force. We will be your direct supervisors, deciding when you should mobilize and how. I would be nice to us, if I were you.”

“Like the Directorate, but worse,” Leo mutters to Jason. “From where I’m sitting, our new bosses are the Supreme Dickhead, a Cuckoocloudlander, Mr. Midlife Crisis, and the Stepford Wives.”

Will Solace, closest to them, leans over and stage whispers, “We can hear you, you know.” 

Leo falls silent. 

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Jason asks him.

Will shrugs. “It’s a job, man. Nice to see you, by the way. Your posture’s terrible; I warned you to watch that.”

Jason automatically straightens his back, cheeks reddening. Will was his primary physician while he was recovering from being frozen; he still knows the best ways to put Jason in his place.

“Well, that’s the meet and greet,” Hermes says, clapping his hands once. “Let’s get on with this. It’s a simple process--you’ve already read the Accords, so just flip to the last page and sign.”

“Signing our lives away,” Piper sighs, but she sounds resigned to the idea. Jason wonders if Piper, who’s worked for just about every organization, legal or otherwise, out there, knows what true freedom is. He doubts it. 

Grover slides the heavy stack of paper over and quickly scribbles his name, the scratch of the pen sounding loud and damning. Then it’s Percy, who scrawls with a flourish, eyes on Jason the entire time; Frank, his broad shoulders seeming to shrink with every letter; Hazel, clear shame on her face, but for what, Jason can’t tell. Annabeth slides her hand into Piper’s and signs with her left, pushing the stack over when she’s done. From where Jason is sitting, he can see both girls’ knuckles are stark white. As usual, he has no idea what’s going on with them. 

Piper hesitates, glancing up at him. They haven’t talked candidly about this, but they didn’t need to. Jason knows her position, and she knows his. They’re past the point where arguing will solve anything. 

She always put faith in SHIELD, maybe with the idea that following orders removes her responsibility for the situation. If Jason had the same track record as the Widow, maybe he’d be a little more eager to pass the buck as well. He doesn’t blame her when she lowers her gaze to the Accords and neatly scribes her name next to Annabeth’s. They all have to do what they must to survive. 

That’s his noble idea, but when the document comes to rest in front of him, his throat seizes up. King John signing the Magna Carta was more comfortable than Jason Grace, acutely aware of the eyes suddenly fixed on him. The unspoken fear that he will not sign is clear in the faces of his friends, who know him well, and those across the table, who know his reputation. 

It won’t be so bad, he reassures himself. They’ll still be a team, just a team that belongs to . . . His eyes connect with Will’s. 

Will, ever so imperceptibly, shakes his head. 

Jason’s thoughts reel--is the doctor telling him to refuse now, at this dramatic juncture? Or is it a warning to _not_ rebel? Or is it something else entirely--a signal that Jason is missing, a sign of--of--

His mind is fracturing, throwing up distractions like confetti, and his hands haven’t budged from where they rest, clenched in fists, on his thighs. Why is he here again? Why has he played along with this frustrating game? 

“Cap,” Percy says, voice jarringly loud as he break the tense silence. “What’s the matter?”

Sign. Don’t sign. Do _something_. Jason wills himself into action; even one of the grand speeches that Piper teases him about would be welcome at this point; but nothing comes. He feels like he’s been frozen all over again, mind still torturously active but his body jailed by outside forces. 

Will mouths something. Jason doesn’t catch it at first, and the doctor does it again.

Jason must be going crazy, because it looks a hell of a lot like _Nico_.

He clears his throat. “Um. Can I ask a question?” 

Hermes and the rest of the CTTF look at him as though he has three heads. Hermes sighs, rolling him eyes. “Must you? I appreciate that you probably only just learned to write your name, but--”

“Have you apprehended Nico di Angelo yet?” Jason blurts out. He notices Will relax in his chair, and guesses he asked the right thing.

The CTTF board goes quiet, funny quiet, and Hermes’s face slowly pales to a mottled shade of green. “Where did you hear that?” he asks.

“A little bird told me,” Jason snarks, and repeats, “Do you have him?”

“We, er--” 

“Yeah, we got ‘em,” the one called Mr. D speaks up for the first time. “Hell of a time capturing him, outsid’a Bucharest. Crazy bastard, kept claiming he got nothing to do with the bombing--like we don’t have proof.” He snorts. “Coupla rounds of interrogation, but he still wouldn’t admit to lying. Bad through and through, that one.”

Jason has to categorize the information in his head, it comes at him too quickly. A) Nico has been captured. B) he’s being ‘interrogated’ ( _tortured_ ). C) he’s innocent. He has to be; if he was still the brainwashed Winter Soldier, he’d simply stay silent, and if he had been paid or blackmailed or manipulated into doing it, he would have confessed. 

An idea--a crazy, ridiculous, ill-advised idea--pops into his head. “Release him,” he declares.

“What?” Several members of the CTTF speak at once, equally baffled looks on their faces.

“Release him and I’ll sign,” Jason says. “Write it in as a clause, or something.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Will Solace grin. 

“This is the final draft, there are no clauses,” Hermes snaps. “Stop talking like an idiot.”

“So . . . you’re saying the Accords can’t be changed?” Jason asks.

“Are you deaf? That’s exactly what I’m saying,” the Secretary responds. 

Jason pushes away from the table, the statement being the final straw in his mind. “Then I can’t condone this. Sorry,” he addresses his team. “I’m willing to compromise, not totally surrender to their will. I was a puppet soldier once--” he directs his words at Hermes. “I’ll be damned if I go through that again.”

“Are you crazy?” Percy stands as well, shoving his chair back impatiently. “This is exactly what I’m talking about--throw Nico’s name into any conversation and you lose rationality!”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Jason cries. “Percy, will you stay out of my business for _one goddamned minute_ , this is my choice!”  
“Not when your decision affects all of us,” Percy retorts. “Try thinking about some of your friends who are here, Grace, and actually care about you. Whether Nico’s responsible for the bombing or not, he’s taken a lot of lives. He’s paying for it now, you can’t save him from that.”

“This has nothing to do with Nico!” Jason shouts.

“This has _everything_ to do with him!” Percy roars back. “He’s clearly the only thing you fucking care about!” 

Jason slams his fist on the table, unintentionally cracking him. “BECAUSE I LOVE HIM! Not that you’d know what that feels like!!”

Dead silence. Jason realizes his chest is heaving, his face flushed. Will is now staring at him as though he’s completely insane, and Piper has that tragic look she gets whenever he manages to really stick his foot in it. Leo, by contrast, has his hand clamped firmly over his mouth to suppress a round of giggles.

Jason doesn’t dare look at Percy.

Then the alarms start to blare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot to say about this chapter but I'm holding back so yay me I'm just gonna say:  
> CLIFFHANGER (*da da dummmmmmmmmm)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _many apologies for the cliched use of "like_ that _" as a euphemism_

Jason and Percy, already standing, are the first to the door, Jason reaching for the double knives he keeps on him when he can’t carry his shield, Percy yanking back his jacket sleeve to ready his repulsor beam. Piper is on their heels, drawing her derringers, and Frank doesn’t bother with the door, phasing right through the wall instead. Jason has a brief moment of pride--whatever threat’s in the building, it doesn’t stand a chance against his team--before remembering that they aren’t his team anymore. 

“Hold it!” Hermes is shouting. “Avengers, stand down! We have security for--”

Jason ignores him; so does Percy, but the others drop back. Only Leo stays with them, snapping his specs into place and scanning the building quickly. 

“Sub-level,” he announces. “The alarm’s some kind of breach-of-perimeter alert--someone’s going where they shouldn’t.”

“We’re about to join them,” Jason says grimly, following Percy to the emergency stairwell. Percy yanks the red door open, and Jason and Leo clatter past and onto the concrete landing.

Jason counts the flights in his head as they go down--second, first, ground. When they reach the ground floor, he and Percy both whip around, looking for another stairwell to get to the sub-level.

“They wouldn’t give access to just anybody,” Leo snaps, throwing himself against the exit and into the foyer. "We'll have to look for it--come on!"

The alarm is still blaring, red lights flashing between the florescent ceiling tiles, in the lobby, and the lack of masses of panicked people throws Jason for a second before he remembers that this isn’t a public facility. He’s so used to civilians in the background, like movie set extras; it occurs to him that he hardly notices their presence anymore, which might have something to do with the increased casualties. 

It turns out that they don’t need to look for the sub-level after all, since the cause of the alarm is standing in the middle of the foyer, a pile of unconscious security ops around him and a wild, panicked look on his face as he whirls around to see Jason, Percy, and Leo. 

All three of them stop in their tracks, skidding to an unsteady halt as they go from full speed to zero in less than a second. Of all the possible scenarios running through their heads, Jason thinks, none of them could have guessed this. 

“Well, speak of the devil.” Leo, never one to be starstruck, whistles and rocks back on his heels. Jason’s trained with him long enough to know this doesn’t mean the engineer isn’t just as ready for battle as he was when he was tensed like a runner; there’s no such thing as “at rest” for Leo. He’s always jumpy, he just chooses when to hide it. 

Nico di Angelo, unarmed, in a black hoodie and jeans instead of the battle fatigues Jason last saw him in, unclenches the vibranium fist of his prosthetic arm, releasing the last security guard from his grip. His eyes lock onto Jason’s at once, as if the other two aren’t even in the same building. 

Jason can see the conflict play out on his old friend’s face; an array of complex emotions that were absent from the Winter Soldier, even in their last battle. This is Nico, not some brainwashed assassin.This is Nico, and he looks like he wants to ask for help, but won’t, but is afraid to, but thinks--and Jason’s just ballparking here--he shouldn’t, for one inane reason or another. Maybe it’s the ex-assassin thing, or the fact that Percy is still very ready to kick Nico’s ass. Possibly he isn’t sure if Jason would help, after everything that’s happened. But there’s no way that someone being mind-controlled would have that struggle between vulnerability and strength in their eyes, and Jason knows this isn’t just wishful thinking; he’s facing Nico di Angelo. 

He feels like he’s just been hit with a lightning bolt, except it’s stronger than that because he’s been electrocuted before and he knows it’s far less than the shock he’s feeling now. His stomach is a writhing, contorting mass of snakes and fire ants, and his skin has broken out in goosebumps. There’s a dull ache in his abdomen. His body moves of its own accord, his gaze still fastened tightly to Nico’s, and he clamps his hand around Percy’s shoulder. Percy whips his head around, startled. 

“Cap?” 

“Move back,” Jason says quietly. “Please.” 

Percy’s mouth drops open. The alarm is piercing into what should be a tense, dramatic silence, but Jason hardly notices it. Jason hardly notices anything except Nico, who draws his attention like a magnet. Did he always gravitate to Nico like this? Jason doesn’t think so. He doesn’t think he’s ever experienced anything like this before, and he doesn’t understand it, but that in no way stops him from acting on it.

“You aren’t serious,” Percy says.

“He didn’t do it,” Jason replies with conviction. “They’re holding an innocent man . . . torturing him.” The thought is nearly unbearable.

“He’s hardly innocent,” Percy snorts. “Here, give me a second to pull up the files of everyone he’s killed--wait, I can’t, because there are _too fucking many_. The CTTF knows what it’s doing.”

“Look at him,” Jason insists, jabbing his finger towards Nico, who’s sporting--among other bruises--a black eye and swollen nose. “Does that look like they know what they’re doing?”

“It looks like he hasn’t gotten anything he hasn’t earned,” Percy snaps. “Honestly, Jason, what’s gotten into you? You can’t turn a blind eye to what he has done.”

“They weren’t holding him for anything he’s done,” Jason doggedly defends Nico. “It’s unjust to--”

“What do you want me to do, let him walk free?” Percy asks sarcastically. “Let the Winter Soldier casually stroll the streets of New York, yeah, that’ll go over well--while we’re at it, let’s invite Samira down here to plot world domination again! And have Gaea over for tea with Kronos!”

Jason grits his teeth against the patented Percy Jackson’s Smart Retort For Everything and says, “I won’t let you hand him over to the U.N.”

“Is that a threat?” Percy demands. 

Jason deliberates. He’d rather not fight Percy, but if he makes it clear that he isn’t budging on this, the other man might back down. Their disagreements have come to blows before, and Jason has a solid history of winning when that happens. Percy might not want to gamble on Jason’s bluff. 

On the other hand, if Percy decides to fight Jason anyway . . . well, that’s just silly. They’re on the same side, after all. Why can’t Percy just realize this is important and let it be?

“I want to resolve this with words, Perce,” he says carefully. “But nothing I’m saying seems to be getting through.”

“Because what you’re saying,” Percy replies, mimicking his slow cadence, “is that you want to release a mass murderer. If our roles were reversed, you’d be telling me I was talking crazy, too.”

“Can’t you just trust me--” Jason begins.

“Right, like you trusted me,” Percy snaps. “You won’t even sign a measly piece of paper for me, why should I do you any favors?”

“That’s what friends do!” Jason exclaims. “For the love of God, you’re being outrageous about this entire thing--why are you getting worked up over nothing?”

“Why are you?” Percy cries, then throws his hands in the air. “Oh, right. Nico di fuckin’ Angelo. You were all set to lay down your high moral standards until Nico popped into the conversation. Why am I not surprised?” 

Leo taps his specs and tells them, “There’s a fresh squad heading up for Nico. Whatever you’re doing, boys, do it fast.”

“Nico, get out of here,” Jason orders, putting his body between Nico and Percy, his arms outstretched. 

Percy powers up his repulsor. “Not gonna happen, Cap.” 

Nico glances between Jason and the door, the conflicted look on his face increasing. He seizes a gun from one of the KO’d guards and points it at Percy’s head. “Shoot Jason,” he says, voice much rougher than Jason remembers, “and I shoot you.”

“Leo,” Percy says at once. 

Leo backs away, hands in the air. “No way. I’m not taking sides.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Percy says. “This isn’t some kind of fucking civil war, it’s Jason being an asshat. Now do what you do best and talk some sense into him.”

Jason takes his eyes off Percy long enough to send Leo a warning look. He doesn’t have to verbalize the complaint; Leo knows better than to reason with Jason when it comes to Nico. 

“We have four minutes until we’re compromised,” Leo says calmly. “Like I said before, you boys better resolve this fast, or else the CTTF is going to resolve it for you.”

“Nico, go,” Jason snaps. “There’s a motorcycle outside, the keys are in the helmet. Smash the GPS--all of Percy’s tech is equipped with a tracking signal to prevent theft.”

“Jason,” Percy growls, frustrated. “Don’t make me do this.”

“Don’t make me surrender my best friend,” Jason replies. 

“Just step aside. That’s all you have to do,” Percy says. “Hell--just stand there. Don’t resist me.”

“I can’t,” Jason says, as Nico moves cautiously to the door, still aiming the Sig Sauer at Percy. 

Jason doesn’t see where they come from, but six men dressed in black fatigues storm out before Percy can reply, all of them armed with machine guns. 

Machine guns? Indoors? Jason wishes he had the time to scoff. Nico hits the doors at once, tearing out of the building, and Jason ducks after him. 

Percy’s first repulsor beam bounces off the doorframe; a warning shot; and Jason is gone before the other man can make good on that warning. He knows Leo follows him, though he doesn’t look back.

“Are you able to fly?” he tosses over his shoulder, as if he doesn’t know that the only reason Leo wears his battered army jacket everywhere is to cover his jetpack. 

“Sure and shooting,” Leo replies. “Meet outside the city?”

“See you there.”

Jason’s hat flies off his head as Leo snaps his wings out, the backdraft from his takeoff along the same scale as an airplane launching into flight. Nico’s already straddling Jason’s bike, but he pauses long enough for Jason to vault onto the back before kicking the vehicle into motion. 

“Almost like old times,” Jason yells, over the roar of the motor. 

“Nothing like old times,” Nico grumbles, sparing a look for the CTTF ops pouring out of the U.N. Headquarters. “If I remember correctly, we were usually being chased by smaller opponents.”

Jason claps him on the shoulder, pleased he remembers anything at all. “They were big in our heads, _fratello_.”

They peel away from the sidewalk, careening down the road at a significantly-more-than-the-legal speed. Nico handles the bike well, though the cars they swerve around seem to have a lower opinion of his skills. Jason wraps one arm around Nico’s stomach for support and twists his head to see if they’re being pursued which, of course, they are.

“I didn’t bomb the U.N. in Vienna!” Nico shouts. Jason can feel his diaphragm vibrate with the force of the words. “I don’t do stuff like that anymore!”

“I know!” Jason turns back around so he can shout the words directly in Nico’s ear. “I could tell.”

His nose is inches from Nico’s hair, and it really doesn’t matter because they’re in the middle of an action-packed chase scene, but he can smell soap and nicotine and musty dirt on Nico’s neck, and it’s very distracting. He has the crazy impulse to bury his face in it, which he squashes because a) Chase Scene and b) that would be very like _that_ and Jason’s already established, to himself and Piper and repeatedly to Leo (who doesn’t believe him) that he isn’t like _that_. 

“How could you?” Nico questions, the motorcycle’s tires screeching in protest as he veers onto the sidewalk for a brief moment before tearing onto a side street. 

“You didn’t look like the Winter Soldier,” Jason explains as best he can while on the back of a bike going sixty miles an hour. “You looked like you, and you aren’t capable of that.”

Nico is silent for a while, and Jason assumes he’s concentrating on driving until the pensive reply of, “I’m capable of more than you think,” comes and then he realizes it was a Meaningful Silence and he totally just missed a sensitive moment. 

“I’m no angel, either,” he says, trying to make up for it. “I’ve changed since we last . . . uh . . . well, y’know. Whatever it was we did at the Triskelion.”

He wouldn’t know Nico was laughing if it weren’t for the heave of his stomach under Jason’s arm. “You’re a saint, Grace. That I remember well enough.”

It looks as though they lost their pursuers, but as Nico veers into an underpass, something lands in their path--something powerful enough to flip the bike into midair and send both of them flying, and not in the safe, mostly controlled Falcon way. Jason slams into the side of the concrete structure, and as he struggles to his feet, he sees Nico rolling off a now-heavily-dented car, its windows smashed and its owner unconscious. The bike is lying on its side a few yards away, motor still running and making an ungodly sound. Between Jason and the vehicle is two lines of speeding, impatient traffic, and a figure dressed entirely in black. 

It’s clearly female, by the contours of her body, but Jason can’t tell much else about her because her face is covered by a sculpted mask. 

He jabs his comm at once. “Leo.”

“Here, boss,” Leo says. “Problems already?”

“What do we know about cat-themed vigilantes?” he questions. 

Leo whistles. “Well, there’s a brother and sister duo in Manhattan that claim they saw a cat burglar. I mean, the man had actual cat parts--ears and a tail and stuff.”

Jason gives the female a once-over. “This one’s female,” he says. “No tail, and she’s wearing the Wakandan crest on her shoulder.”

“Okay,” Leo pauses, maybe checking Percy’s Our Friends And Enemies list, and then says, “Yeah, J, I got nothing. Of course, Wakanda is pretty remote . . . we don’t know a lot about them. Maybe dressing up in cat costumes is a normal part of their culture.”

“Well, whatever it is, we’re going to be late,” Jason tells him. “It looks like our friend wants to chat with us.”

“‘We’, ‘us’,” Leo mocks. “Didn’t take long for you crazy kids to become a couple. I feel kind of abandoned.”

Jason growls. Apparently it’s time for Leo’s hourly “Accuse Jason Of Being Gay!” PSA. He takes the opportunity to utilize one of Percy’s favorite phrases. “Shut up, Leo.”

He cuts the link and glances at Nico, who’s glaring at Ms. Fanservice. “You,” he says, apparently acquainted with their guest. “Didn’t you have enough after Bucharest?”

“Nico,” Jason asks nervously, “What happened in Bucharest?”

Nico just shakes his head, which isn’t encouraging. The masked woman doesn’t seem inclined to comment either, holding herself as though braced for a battle. 

Jason tries anyway. “What do you want with us?” 

Predictably, he doesn’t get a reply, and Nico doesn’t wait any longer to attack. He springs towards the girl, armed with nothing but, well, his arm. He must have dropped his gun before getting on the motorcycle. He seizes her throat, attempting to throw her to the ground, and somehow--impossibly--she resists.

Jason’s been on the receiving end of Nico’s strength before, and he’s also been in the unpleasant situation of having his former friend’s hand clenched around his throat. In neither case was he fit to fight back, let alone resist the attack altogether. But the female slides out of Nico’s grasp with little, if any, effort, her arms slashing towards him so quickly, Jason almost misses the movement.

She must be armed with some kind of hidden knives, because her strike leaves the front of Nico’s sweatshirt in tatters, and he dodges back, swearing. Jason, fittingly enough, is reminded of a cat lashing out when it’s been provoked. 

He barrels past Nico, making as though he’s going to wham their opponent with a straightforwards punch. At the last second, he shifts his body weight and slams both sneakers into her thighs, knocking her off-balance. 

He glances back at Nico, the plan seamlessly flowing between them in a matter of seconds. It’s easy, because it’s a simple one: run.

Jason catapults over the female, who’s already getting to her feet, and Nico zips down the overpass, running much faster than Jason would give him credit for. He pumps his own legs hard, wishing they still had his bike. 

Damn, he really liked that bike.

“Keeping heading out of the city!” he shouts to Nico. “I’ll hold her off.”

“You and what shield?” is Nico’s sardonic reply, but he speeds up anyway, tearing ahead of Jason, vaulting off more than a few cars.

Show off.

Jason slows down just enough that the woman, who sprang up to pursue them, can catch him. This isn’t the first time he’s thrown himself into a fight without knowing his opponent, so rather than be nervous or cautious, he’s just annoyed. Here he is, trying to reconnect with Nico, and every damn person on the planet keeps getting in his way.

The attacker tries the same swipe move that ruined Nico’s jacket, but Jason darts back before she can, rushing forwards as she’s forced to follow her swing to its conclusion and seizing her by the shoulders. He wrenches her to the ground, right in the path of an oncoming car.

He assumes the blare of a horn is from the vehicle barreling towards the woman, until the hood of a sedan slams into his waist and he finds himself bounced violently over the car’s roof and rolled out onto the road behind. When he gathers himself again, plastering himself to the overpass wall so he’s out of traffic altogether, and scans the lanes, he sees no trace of the woman.

Dammit.

He launches off in the direction Nico took, swearing under his breath. He was supposed to engage and distract the pursuer, not let her off so she could chase down Nico, whom she’s obviously targeting for some reason.

Well, it isn’t that surprising. Everyone wants a piece of Nico.

He sprints down the highway, eyes darting here and there for Nico or the woman, still cursing his stupidity. 

The sound of sirens comes from behind him, and Jason casts a wild glance behind him to see four black SUVs, all of them with the letters CTTF emblazoned on their bumpers, weaving through cars in pursuit of him. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he screams, the words lost in the commotion. He accelerates, knowing that even he doesn’t stand a chance on foot against vehicles. 

His cry of outrage becomes a surprised shout when his feet abruptly lose contact with the ground, and he thrashes desperately until he realizes that he’s being carried by Leo, who looks less than impressed by his welcome.

“See if I ever save your ass again!” he declares.

Jason points down the highway. “Nico!” 

Leo groans, but he obediently swoops towards the two figures sprinting down the road, Jason swinging underneath him like the world’s largest bracelet charm. 

The woman is closing in on Nico, using the passing cars as stepping stones to where he pelts ahead, arms and legs pumping wildly. Leo is faster than either of them, dropping Jason and landing in both of their paths.

Nico vaults past Jason like a shot, nothing but air, then skids to a halt, slamming into Jason’s back in his efforts to retreat.

Startled, Jason stumbles a few steps, and their pursuer stops short.

“Wh--” Jason begins.

Leo glances over his shoulder, and then deflates. “Jason. Look.” 

Jason spins around, craning to see around Nico. Crowding in from the exit ahead, six more CTTF vehicles are moving to block their path. 

They’re surrounded.

“Leo--” Jason begins, but it’s too late.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _75% Jason being yelled at_

It’s a very long, very quiet flight to Germany. 

Despite Jason’s protests, Nico is wrestled into a containment chamber and shipped via high-security aircraft. Nico doesn't fight back, which stings more than being ambushed. The rest of them are herded into Percy’s private jet.

Jason and Leo sit in the middle of the cabin, stripped of their weapons, both stewing. Across from them is the woman who’d chased them, a girl around Nico’s (physical) age with dirty blond hair and a scowl. Percy stands, glowering, on one end of the cabin, and Piper on the other; like bodyguards, Jason thinks darkly. 

Leo looks over at the girl and his face changes from sullen to shocked. “Clarisse la Rue,” he says. “Princess of Wakanda.”

Clarisse turns her head, refusing to look at him. 

“It’d be in your best interest to stay quiet,” Percy advises. “I feel less inclined to burn a hole in your head that way.”

The next few hours are painfully silent. Leo touches Jason’s hand a few times, mutely asking if he’s okay, but Jason just shakes his head and withdraws, not in the mood to be handled. He meets Piper’s eyes occasionally, but her expression is reserved. 

They disembark in Berlin, somewhere on the outskirts of the city; emerging from the plane and directly into a hanger bay, which transitions smoothly into some kind of security base with armed guards milling around everywhere. It's real friendly. 

“Welcome to the Joint Counterterrorism Center,” Percy says. “The center for all of your counterterrorism needs.”

“Percy,” Piper groans.

Percy waves his hand airily. “Someone has to laugh at this,” he declares, though he looks as close to laughing as a dead man. “God forbid we ever cry.”

“Are you capable of crying?” Jason mutters childishly.

Percy gives him a long look, all green eyes and peevishness. “You’re breaking my heart, Grace.”

He says it almost seriously enough to be believable.

“Why are we here?” Clarisse demands. “I’m royalty. How long do you think you can detain me?”

“By all rights, we should send you to be court-marshaled in Bucharest,” Piper says, using her angry voice. Jason remembers she mentioned being fond of the Wakandan princess; good to know he isn’t the only one shattering people’s impressions today. “Your pursuit of the Winter Soldier resulted in six car crashes, three fatal injuries, and more minor conditions and property destruction than I care to count.”

“He isn’t the Winter Soldier anymore,” Jason exclaims.

“He killed my lover!” Clarisse snaps. “In my country, the act of murder is payable only by death! By all rights, he should die a hundred times over for the lives he has taken!”

“Yes, but we aren’t in your country, Clarisse,” Piper snaps. “Taking justice into your own hands inevitably leads to the kind of destruction the Accords are seeking to prevent. If you want to continue operating as this . . .” she looks Clarisse’s costume up and down, frowning, “. . . panther thing, then you’ll need to sign like the rest of us--and adhere to our rules.”

“I’m not a costumed vigilante,” Clarisse spits, sounding disgusted. “Nor a superhero. This mantle is our cloak of justice--I am an avenger.”

Jason gets the feeling he’d like Clarisse, in another lifetime. 

“ _We’re_ Avengers,” Percy corrects. “ _You’re_ a royal pain in the ass. Unfortunately, we aren’t the Romanian government and can’t prosecute you for crimes committed in their country. In addition to that, you haven’t violated the Accords since you attacked before they went into effect.” He checks his watch. “As of five minutes ago, however, any and all vigilante activity not approved by the U.N. and CTTF is considered a cross-borders crime. So if I were you, I’d scurry on back to Wakanda and keep a low profile.”

He turns to Jason and Leo. “As for you two--” 

“Ooh, ooh, let me take this one,” Piper butts in, and whirls on them. She takes a deep breath, face reddening, and shouts at the top of her lungs, “YOU SHIT-FOR-BRAINS IDIOTS! YOU ABSOLUTE MORONS! WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!”

“Where’s Nico?” Jason asks, because it both answers her question and voices his. Piper slaps him upside the head, then Leo, then him again for good measure. 

“You’re both so fucking grounded!” she cries. 

Leo makes a whining noise, clutching his scalp. “Was that really necessary?” he complains. 

“It was necessary,” Percy affirms. “Clearly, treating you two like adults is a mistake.” He wheels on Jason, his frown deepening. “You’ll be lucky to make it out of this with only bruises, Cap. Your ‘fuck off’ to the CTTF came across loud and clear.”

“I wasn’t telling any to fuck off,” Jason says. Percy scoffs. 

“Let’s get into a room,” Piper says. “We’re making a scene in the hall.”

“You’re the one who started with the yelling and the hitting,” Leo mutters, still sulky. Percy opens one of the many doors along the passage, waving them inside. Jason feels like he’s spent the last month in and out of conference rooms, and it’s starting to drive him batshit insane.

“Nico,” he says, once they’re in. Call him a dog with a bone; he doesn’t care. “Where did they take him?”

“He’s being contained and evaluated,” Piper responds. Percy closes the door. 

“Evaluated?” Jason folds his arms, not about to sit. He doesn't like the sound of "evaluated". Evaluated is never good.

“His mental health is in question,” she says dryly. “Are you surprised?”

“No more ‘interrogation’,” he declares.

“You aren’t in a place to be making demands,” Percy snaps. “God, Jason, I can hardly even look at you! How could you fuck this up so badly?”

“Mom, Dad,” Leo gestures between Jason and Percy. “C’mon, guys. Enough fighting, this is getting ridiculous. We all have the same goals, so--”

“No,” Jason interrupts. 

“We don’t have the same goals at all,” Percy adds, and jabs his thumb at Jason. “All this guy cares about is his precious Nico, and fuck the rest of the world.”

“He says as though I’ve joined the KGB,” Jason says, throwing up his hands. “This whole thing is a joke! You didn’t give a rat’s ass when I was hunting down Nico bef--”

“Because it didn’t matter then!” Percy cries. “Do what you want in your free time! But as soon as a crisis hits, you’re on the clock! That’s what being an Avenger _is_ , Jason, putting aside your personal beliefs to think about what’s good for humanity for a change!”

“Good for humanity?” Jason demands. “Now we’re talking about the _good of humanity_?! You’re sounding an awful lot like SHIELD, Perce.”

“SHIELD wasn’t bad,” Piper interjects swiftly. “SHIELD was not a bad organization.”

“SHIELD was a cover for Hydra,” Leo argues. “Looked pretty bad to me.”

“You’ve been here five minutes, you don’t get a vote!” she exclaims. 

Leo throws up his hands. “Story of my life!” 

“This isn’t about Nico, or SHIELD, or even following orders!” Percy snaps at Jason, ignoring the other two. “This is about being responsible, and you . . . aren’t.” He loses his fire for a moment, looking at Jason sadly. “You’ve disappointed me, Jase. I mean, you really did it this time. All you had to do was sign.”

Jason braces himself on the table. “Percy,” he says quietly. “The next time you’re in a bind, and Grover can’t help, and Rachel won’t, and everybody else is too busy or has their hands tied up by the CTTF? The next time you think, oh, man, time to call Cap because there’s no one else to get my back?” He shakes his head. “Don’t. Because I won’t come. Then maybe you’ll understand how disappointed I feel right now.”

“And this just got extremely dramatic,” Piper mutters. “Should we leave you two alone to fall into each other’s arms in peace?”

“Or on each other’s swords,” Leo adds.

“No one’s falling into anything,” Percy says. “Except Jason falling further into his own shit and self-denial.”

“Self-denial? What the fuck are you talking about?” Jason demands.

“Someone’s been watching Dr. Phil,” Leo mumbles.

“Okay, shut up!” Jason and Percy chorus, whirling on him. “This is chaotic enough without the peanut gallery,” Jason adds. 

Leo holds up his hands in surrender. “But I have to ask--why is no one yelling at Piper?”

“I could shoot you all in the time it takes Jason to blink,” Piper says, drawing her favorite derringers as proof.

“Why just Jason?” Leo asks.

“He’s a very fast blinker,” she replies, deadpan.

Jason rolls his eyes, catching Percy doing the same thing. “What about self-denial?”

“Uh--screaming your love for Nico di Angelo in front of, like, everybody?” Percy says. “And insisting to Leo out of the other side of your mouth that you aren’t gay.”

“I’m not two-faced,” Jason says. “And you were the one who said Nico didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Yeah, well, I lied,” Percy shrugs. “I lie, I manipulate, I’m a generally terrible person. If you hadn’t popped up when you did, I would probably be dead from my glamorous and hedonistic lifestyle. But even I know when to quit fronting and just admit the fucking truth.”

“What fucking truth? All I’m hearing is a lot of unfounded accusations!” Jason exclaims. “Going on and on about Nico and shit--what’s the point? You want me to say I’m gay? Give up on saving Nico? Fine. Whatever. But even if I do these things, I’m still not signing the fucking Accords and that’s that.”

“I refuse to believe that!” Percy cries. “You were going to--”

“I don't know what I was going to do,” Jason says. “But I can’t uphold standards I don’t believe in, Percy, and Nico . . . helped me remember that.”

“So, that’s it? That’s your final say?” Percy asks. “No way, no how, not ever? Because if that’s really what you’re saying, Jason, then we’re going to have to arrest you.”

“On what charges?” Jason responds. “I didn’t break the Accords, same as Clarisse. I haven’t acted as a superhero since they went into effect.”

“Because you’ve been busy jumping down my throat,” Percy objects. “It’s just a matter of time--”

“You can’t hold me for a crime you think I’ll commit,” Jason says flatly. “Maybe I’m planning on retiring. You can’t prove I’m going to break the Accords.”

“I can prove you’re stronger than the average elephant,” Percy retorts. “Nearly invulnerable, prone to fits of temper, capable of wrecking entire buildings if the mood strikes you--far too dangerous to release into the public.”

Jason folds his arms. He’s about to point out the obvious, that he’s still an American citizen and he (probably) can’t be detained like this for long, when Grover bursts into the room, looking frantic.

“Percy, we need to move,” he snaps. “Solace was doing the psych eval for the Soldier and he just . . . snapped. Nico, I mean. He’s escaped.”

“Again?” Percy groans. “What does it take to hold this guy? Hey--Jason, wait!” 

Jason’s already shoving past Grover, halfway down the corridor before he realizes he has no idea where he’s going. He’s not really in a hallway so much as an open passage, the various rooms on this floor flowing seamlessly into each other without walls. There are various computer stations, what looks like a break room, and a glassed-in space with several news feeds running at once. Some of the people are armed guards, like Jason saw when he first entered the building, but most are dressed as civilians. A guy balancing five carry-trays of coffee orders stops in his tracks, staring at Jason as though he’s never seen anything more shocking. 

“Uh--I’m looking for where they were holding Nico di Angelo?” he offers. Behind him, he can hear Percy and Piper clattering after him, their voices blending together in a harmony of disapproval. 

A girl in a gray pantsuit gets up from her computer console, grabbing his arm and dragging him towards the far wall. He’s too surprised to fight her off as she leads him to a door and shoves him through, his gaze fixed on the caramel twist of her hair. 

“Di Angelo’s down in the vault,” she says, as he looks around the stairwell in confusion. She snaps her fingers in front of his face. “Cap! Pay attention! Nico--basement--now.”

“Wait a--” he starts, trying to grab her arm, get a better look at her face. She’s already slipped back through the door, and he sees through the narrow window that she’s pressed her back against it and is acting as though Piper has her too terrified to move. 

He has the uncanny feeling that he knows this person, but Nico’s the priority now--Nico, or maybe the people he’s about to hurt. Jason doesn’t like the sound of the word “snapped”. 

He bangs his way down the stairs, wishing his mysterious benefactor had told him exactly which floor was the basement--then it hits him. Basement. Just keep going until there aren’t any stairs left.

It’s a good thing no one relies on him for his brain, because a Percy or a Leo, he is not. 

But he’s no fathead, either. He knows that Nico wouldn’t go crazy for no reason--not the sane, rational Nico that had talked with him on the bike earlier. Not the Nico who’d calmly said he didn’t do ‘stuff like that’ anymore. Something down in the vault must have set Nico off, which means that he can still be set off, which means that he’s still not entirely trustworthy.

Strangely enough, this makes Jason feel hopeful. Maybe he hasn’t been able to find Nico by now, not because he and Leo are incompetent, but because Nico didn’t want to be found; and maybe Nico didn’t want to be found because he was afraid he’d go off the rails and be all Winter-Soldier-y again; and that means that Nico’s thinking of these things, and conscienceless people don’t think of these things so there’s hope yet for Nico’s soul.

Not that Jason ever doubted it.

The stairs finally stop, presenting him with a single, windowless door marked RESTRICTED ACCESS. Jason likes signs like that. They’re pretty much an open challenge. He meets this one grimly, slamming his shoulder into what feels like reinforced steel. Sure, it still crumples like an old paper bag under his drive, but it crumples much more slowly than a normal door would and he has to pound on it twice before it gives. 

The basement is designed very simply; half of its space is a warden’s office, and the other half is a jail cell. Dividing the two is a clear, most-likely-not-glass, wall. There’s a desk facing the cell, and slumped at it is . . . someone. Jason can only see the curve of the person’s back from where he is. The cell appears to be empty. 

He goes forwards cautiously. He’s less skittish about going into conflicts without his shield now, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t more careful when he doesn’t have it with him. Although Percy’s assessment of him sounded like the profile of a minor god, Jason knows better than most that he isn’t as great as all that. The things that would kill a normal man would still kill him, just more slowly. 

He reaches the desk, putting his hand on the shoulder of the man there. Nudging the man’s body to the side, he catches a flash of blond hair and then--all at once--realizes that it’s Will Solace. 

“Will.” He shakes his former doctor, as if the man is only sleeping. “Will, pal, c’mon. Your posture is terrible.”

No reply. Jason snakes his fingers between Will’s jaw and shoulder to check his pulse. It’s still there, reassuringly, but the doctor seems to be unconscious. Jason leaves him where he is and approaches the cell wall. “Nico? You still here, buddy?” 

It’s no wonder Percy thinks he’s an idiot. He insists on calling a possibly brainwashed (again) assassin ‘buddy’. 

He raps on the material making up the partition. It feels sturdy enough; he probably wouldn’t be able to break it with his fists alone; and there’s no evidence that Nico   
managed to, either. It doesn’t look like he needed to, though, since there’s a door to Jason’s left swung wide open. 

Will makes a muffled groaning sound, and Jason whirls to face him. Will straightens his back slowly, rubbing his head. 

“What happened?” Jason demands.

Will frowns. “Jason? What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing?” Jason counters. “Taking a nap?” 

“I was just asking di Angelo a few questions,” Will says. “Getting a feel for his mental state. He was pretty agitated--kept demanding to know where you were, that kind of thing. Next thing I know, he’d gotten out and was slamming my head into the desk.” He presses his fingers gingerly into his hair, feeling around on his scalp. “That’s gonna leave a bump,” he mutters. 

“Where did he go?” Jason asks. “C’mon, Will, I don’t have a lot of time--you know he moves fast.”

“I was a touch too unconscious to notice,” Solace snaps. “Geez, Grace; pay attention to someone besides Nico for once.”

“Apparently that’s the theme for today,” Jason mutters, rushing back to the door and ignoring Will’s continued crabbing at his back. “Upbraid Jason for actually giving a damn.”

“He’s probably looking for you!” Will calls, just before Jason ducks back into the stairwell. “If he’s reverted back to his old, murderous self--you were his last mission. He’s probably looking to kill you.”

“Just like old times,” Jason groans, and shouts over his shoulder, “I’m sure the others are coming soon--sit tight, you’ll be safest here.”

He barrels back up the stairs, too preoccupied with Nico to really think about the fact that the door to the cell had been open. Not forced, not broken, just . . . open.

Like someone had let Nico out.


	10. Chapter 10

Piper _so_ wants to wring Jason’s neck right now, but she can’t say she isn’t a little jealous that he cares so much about Nico. Percy’s probably feeling like that, too; though she knows better than to accuse him of something so petty. 

“Irresponsible, inconsiderate, irrational piece of 1940s scrap material,” Percy is muttering savagely under his breath, as they dart out of the conference room to find that Jason is already gone. “Should’ve left him on ice. Should’ve chopped him up into tiny pieces and used him to make mixed drinks. Would’ve been a hell of a novelty at parties--here, would you like a fragment of Captain America in your rum?” 

“Percy,” Piper says, folding her arms. “You’re making weird threats again. We talked about that, remember?” 

Leo comes out of the room and rests his elbow on Piper’s shoulder. “Crazy about the Soldier,” he says conversationally. “I’d help you track him down and all, but I don’t want to be arrested.”

She shoots him a glare. His skewed idea of humor is the last thing they need right now.

Percy ignores them, pulling up security feeds on the nearest computer. “Where is he, where is he, where is he--” he mumbles. 

As if in answer, the sounds of crashing, breaking, and general mayhem start up from the next room over and a desk chair comes smashing through the partition to Piper’s left, whizzing dangerously close to her head. 

“Found him,” she says idly. 

“How did he--” Percy starts. 

_Does it matter?_ she thinks, and rolls her eyes, sidestepping as Nico comes crashing through the wall after the chair. She's not in the mood to fight an angry Winter Soldier, but when he whirls on her--flexing his silver fist, his eyes flat and blank--she abruptly changes her stance. She might not know him as well as Jason does, but she can still tell the difference between someone aware of their actions and someone--like Nico--who isn’t in control. 

“Shit,” she says to Leo. 

“Shit,” he agrees. “If I’m fighting in self-defense, I won’t get in trouble, right?” 

She shrugs. “Hell if I know. But I’ll pretend you were never here if you help me.”

That’s apparently enough for the engineer, who easily ducks Nico’s charge at him and seizes a cupholder from one of the desks. Piper thinks he’s gone crazy until he manages to drive a pen into Nico’s armpit; the assassin roars in pain, which has to be a good thing since she’s seen him get hit by a car and come out of it unfazed. 

“Pressure points, bitch!” Leo crows, but his gloating costs him as Nico slams him into a desk. 

Piper leaps forwards, jumping onto Nico’s back like a monkey and clinging for dear life. “Percy!” she shouts.

Percy palms Nico’s side, the whine of his repulsor beam charging somehow louder in her ears than the cacophony Nico makes thrashing around under her grip, and shoots him point-blank in the ribs. The kickback sends the billionaire flying, skidding over several desks and one panicked woman. Nico throws himself against the wall he crashed through, stunning Piper enough to release her grip on him. 

Leo gets to his feet. “Nico, dude, c’mon!” he shouts. “Jason’s gonna be so pissed at you if you kill us!” 

Nico pauses at Jason’s name. His head swivels around to Leo, and he frowns slightly. 

Piper yanks one of her derringers from her belt and shoots him. 

His arm comes up to block the shot, and he charges at her with a roar, the world going blurry as she’s whipped through the air by a force stronger than anything she’s experienced before. His flesh fist whams into the side of her head and she sees spots, blood rushing to her head in dizzying proportions; the screaming people in the background, the thump of the CTTF agents approaching, Leo’s panicked shout of “Piper!”, all fading out to be replaced by the ocean sound of her heartbeat. 

She feels herself being dropped to the floor, forgotten, but only distantly. Her vision is patchy, picking up a sliver of Nico’s heel, a flash of Leo’s skin, the hem of Percy’s skinny jeans, as all three of them charge past her in their battle. 

And then Jason’s there, his face snapping into focus as he rights her, his voice coming in as the first clear signal from the outside world: “Pipes, are you hurt? What happened? He was here, wasn’t he?” 

She blinks, rotating her head slowly, taking in deep breaths. “I don’t feel so good,” she says shakily. Her own voice sounds too loud. “He hit me. Here.” She touches the side of her face, right in front of her left ear. 

Jason’s holding her shoulder with one hand and her neck with the other; he takes her face in his fingers and turns it, examining the spot. She doesn’t like the look on his face. 

“Stay here,” he says, his expression painful to look at. He looked like that when he saw Nico for the first time as the Winter Soldier; he looked like that when he had to tell Hazel that Frank was dead; he looked like that when Percy admitted that he was responsible for the creation of Gaea. It’s Jason’s Worst Case Scenario face. 

It doesn’t help that he’s never gentle with her, and he’s stroking her face like she’s a child, the rough pads of his thumbs grazing her skin. “It’s okay,” he says--lies, freakin’ lies--“Just stay here, sit still.”

She attempts a smile. “Sure thing. Sit still and look pretty. That’s what I’m all about.” She doesn’t try to insist that she’s okay; she knows her own body pretty well. 

Jason presses his lips to her forehead, which is terrifying in and of itself. “You’re okay, Pipes,” he mumbles. “I love you.”

“Rats,” she mutters, leaning back against something hard. Maybe a desk? It’s more stable than her, that’s for sure. “I must be dying or something.”

He doesn’t respond, and when she focuses again, he’s gone. There’s a lot of commotion around her, but her head is starting to hurt and it’s too much work to pay attention when there’s nothing for her to do.

She closes her eyes, and promptly loses consciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, guys, I know I normally do Sunday updates, _and_ I missed a week (or two), so sorry about that. Starting next week, I'll be resuming a regular schedule. As always, thanks for reading xoxo


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Jason swears a lot more than Steve Rogers, if you haven't noticed_

It’s official, Jason thinks. Somewhere along the line, he sold his soul to Nico and he’s never going to get it back now. Because he’s thinking about Piper--worrying about her, really--while his feet take him to Nico, and he can’t stop. He keeps thinking, _she’s hurt_ , and, _so much blood_ , and, _did she even realize?_ , but also, _Nico_ , and, _he’s alone_ and, _if I don’t stop him, no one will_ , and Nico wins out despite Jason’s overwhelming desire to turn back. 

The magnetic force has returned, and Jason can feel it calling him to Nico’s side like the howl of a wolf in search of its pack. It’s easy enough to follow the trail of destruction Nico left, and there was a man once, a man with a red skull, and he took Jason’s entire world and now Jason wants it back, dammit, and that’s possible for the first time ever and he’d be mooncalf crazy to give it up. 

Nico might have left a trail of broken furniture, but there are no more bodies lying frighteningly limp on the floor, like Piper’s. Everyone seemed to have the good sense to get out of the Soldier's way. Jason passes Percy, who’s clutching his wrist but otherwise seems fine. 

“He’s heading for the roof,” he tells Jason. “There’s a helicopter. I’m outta juice--I need to get back to my lab before my heart totally fails.” He pauses. “Looks like you get a pass for today, Grace. I’d make the most of it.”

Jason acknowledges him and charges by. If Nico finds a helicopter, he’ll be gone for sure, and Jason doesn’t have a hope of tracking him. 

So here he is again, racing towards a helipad to save his friend, and he’s getting pretty tired of all of these parallels in his life because it feels like he’s doing nothing but repeat history, over and over again, and still managing to screw it up. He can’t lose Nico again, it’s starting to wear on him; more than anything else in the world, he can’t lose Nico again, because how pathetic is a hero who can’t save his own family?

“Nico, you genetically enhanced pain in the ass,” he mutters. “When you’re you again, I’m kicking you into next Tuesday.” 

Nico used to be the sensible one. Nico used to be the ‘don’t do that, don’t touch that, don’t so much as look at that, Jason’ kind of friend. But they’ve both come a long way from Brooklyn, and the world they live in now demands all kinds of risks. The world they live in now holds a Nico who almost killed Jason’s closest friend, and a Jason who can scale three flights of stairs without wheezing. Jason’s the sensible one now, and Nico’s the fellow who needs to be told not to do things. 

He bangs out onto the roof just as Nico’s lifting off the helipad, and Jason finds himself once more in the uncomfortable situation of ruining a takeoff. He races towards the craft, the wind from the rotors whipping his face and stealing the moisture from his eyes and mouth as he opens it to yell.

“Nico! Where do you think you’re going?!” 

Where’s Leo when he needs him? The helicopter is already starting to rise above the launch pad. Jason puts on another burst of speed, throwing his body towards the craft. He seizes the helicopter’s tread seconds before it clears the roof, his heels skidding across concrete as he tries to pull it back down. 

He must be crazy. 

He must be fucking insane. 

At very best, he’s going to be pulled out over the reservoir below.

He slides towards the edge of the roof, mind still torn between _WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING YOU IDIOT_ and _gonna crash gonna crash gonna crash SAVE NICO FIRST_. 

But he’s done. He’s 100% done. He’s not going to spend any more of his life chasing after Nico, not when he’s this close. He’s had enough of the running and the fighting and the worrying, two years’ worth of grief and two more of trying to track Nico down; he’s seen hell and heaven and good ole’ fashioned American spirit since and he’s fed up with all of it, he wants a new view. 

Hazel got Frank back, and Piper and Annabeth are inextricably entwined no matter what they claim their relationship status is. Percy can stand next to his best friend without fearing for his life. Even Reyna, wherever she’s run off to, is happy if the postcards she sends are anything to judge by. 

And Jason, who’s given every pound of his flesh to his country, who’s fought tooth and nail for six years as a soldier, a hero, and an Avenger; who sometimes feels like he’s got nothing left to pour out before finding another reserve of strength to give--Jason, who loves what he is but still feels something missing--has had it up to here. This is his limit.

He’s not wrecked over Nico anymore. He’s not torn between duty and heart, or however the fuck Piper used to put it. He’s decided: this is his line. He will give up everything, but he will not give up on Nico. And if the world or the press or his friends or _this fucking helicopter_ don’t like that, then they can just fight him. 

The guardrail is getting closer; Jason braces his feet, but he can’t stop the slow progress of his body against the roof. Instead of fighting, then, he gives up, his body snapping forwards with the sudden lack of resistance. He zips across the roof a touch faster than he expected, and just barely manages to snag the guardrail as he passes. 

FUCK.

FUCK.

JUST FUCK.

His arm might have just been ripped out of its socket. He’s not sure. He’s suspended between the roof and the helicopter for an awful second as his feet scramble to find some kind of grip. There’s a bit of a slope after the roof edge, an eave that gives way to a gutter, and he lands on that, the grooved tiles helping him grip. 

The helicopter is straining against him, trying to go up, and Jason has never done anything so hard in his life as keep it from flying away. His left shoulder is screaming, shaking from the pain, making his hold on the railing tenuous at best. The more he shifts his position or tries to increase the force he’s putting on the helicopter, the worst it gets. His vision is going spotty, tunneling and sometimes blacking out entirely. He feels like the only thing to exist in the world right now is the two weights in his grasp.

But somehow, probably through sheer determination, he’s winning--if this can be called a fight. Inch by inch, he’s drawing the helicopter closer to his body; closer to the roof. If he had the breath, he’d call for Nico to stop, but he gets the feeling it wouldn’t mean much. Nico isn’t himself right now.

Jason slowly, agonizingly, hauls the helicopter nearer; it twists sideways as Nico attempts to free himself, and angles, and through what he can only call a miracle, its blades come into contact with the roof, the steel ripping through the bricks but also bending themselves, so that the crafts veers even more out of control. It spins out of Jason’s grip and crashes on the roof, motor still roaring as it tries to spin blades that aren’t responding.

He scrambles over the guardrail and dashes towards the helicopter, ripping the door off to get to Nico. He’s worried for all of ten seconds; then a metal fist shoots out of the debris and clenches his throat in a chokehold.

Nope, Nico’s fine. 

“Bastard--” Jason grunts out, irritated even though he just manhandled a helicopter for the chance to be strangled by Nico again. 

Nico breaks out of the helicopter, still holding on to Jason, shoving him backwards. He’s scowling and silent, and probably about to kill Jason for impeding his escape. 

Then the door to the roof flies open and a shitton of CTTF agents storm in.

“Shitton”: Percy’s pet phrase for ‘too many to fight alone’. Never more appropriate than now. 

Of course, Jason’s too busy wrestling with Nico to give too much thought to guests. He works his non-injured arm around Nico’s hold, attempting to break it, and his feet tangle up with the assassin’s. They’re closer to the rail than Jason thought, and when Nico is forced backwards, his calves hit the rail and he goes over. 

And since Jason is currently locked in the Winter Soldier’s grip, he also finds himself plunging down towards the reservoir. 

Parallels, he thinks, having just enough time to recognize the irony before they smack into the water. His life is nothing but a series of parallels.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Aly is a pjo character in disguise. it's like a mystery . . . only much, much lamer._

“Tell me how this happened.”

Percy would rather be, well, anywhere. He’d rather be in Niflheim, the realm that inspired the human myth of hell. He’d rather be in Las Vegas, where he owes more money than he cares to admit. He’d rather be in Rachel’s apartment, even though she’s made it abundantly clear that they are o.v.e.r. and he’d better stop calling her at two a.m. because she is no longer picking up. 

He would rather be eating humble pie in front of Jason than stand here, trying to explain to the council how the building full of heroes allowed the Winter Soldier to escape. 

Will Solace has an ice pack pressed to his head; Percy notes that no one is questioning him, even though he was the last person to see Nico in captivity. 

Hermes taps his finger on the desk in front of him. “Waiting, Mr. Jackson,” he says. “Please tell me how this happened.”

Percy shrugs. 

“I’m going to need more than that,” Hermes grows. “I can’t put a shrug in my report to the President.”

Percy misses Piper. He misses Grover. Hell, he even misses Leo and that guy drives him nuts. And he really, really misses Jason. Jason always knows how to placate people, how to spin his (usually misguided) actions into heroism, how to shut Percy up when he’s about to open his big, fat mouth and say something snarky like, “Well, you can embellish it a little bit. Maybe call it a casual shrug. Or a heroic shrug.”

The Secretary of State glowers at him. 

“Um,” a girl in a gray pantsuit says. Considering they’re having this meeting out in the open, in the midst of the cleanup, Percy isn’t surprised a bystander didn’t jump in earlier; everyone else looks shocked. He guesses that the mooks around here mostly mind their own business. “The Winter Soldier is known for taking down entire squads, sir. Percy Jackson and his allies were unarmed and unprepared.”

“Those are legends,” Hermes scoffs.

“ _He_ was a legend,” Percy points out, and flashes his new best friend a smile. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” She pulls a few papers out of the stack of files in her hands and passes them to Hermes. “Here’s a list of his know safehouses. If he hits any of those, we’ll know. But since he has Jason Grace with him, it’s likely they’ll try some other location first.” 

Hermes waffles a bit, and then sighs. “Alright. Fine. It doesn’t matter how it happened,” he says. “Jackson, I’m tasking you with finding these two. Use--” he waves his hand at the girl. “Who the fuck are you again? I don’t remember seeing you around.”

“I’m Aly,” the girl says. “With respect, sir, you can’t remember everyone who works for you.”

“Right. Whatever. Use Aly,” he continues. “Hunt down di Angelo and take him out.”

“What?” Percy is too surprised to do anything but blurt out the word. 

“Take. Him. Out. Kill him,” Hermes says impatiently. “I have a limited supply of good will, kid, and he just used it up. Let’s end this Winter Soldier fiasco once and for all.”

“But--” 

Hermes’ eyes flash. “What?” 

Aly lays her hand on Percy’s arm. “But we’re going to need help,” she says, very sweetly. Percy has no foundation for it, but he gets the feeling she’s dealt with a lot of guys like Hermes before. It makes him feel slightly less out-of-control about the whole situation. “Can you authorize us to use whatever force is necessary?”

“Yes, yes,” he says impatiently. “You have my permission to mobilize any . . . associates . . . that you believe could be of use.”

Aly claps her hands. “Excellent. Thank you, sir.”

Percy, meanwhile, is still trying to process. Kill Nico di Angelo? Jason’s childhood friend? Kill the one person Jason’s made it clear he loves to all extent? 

If Percy does that, he’ll lose Jason forever. But if he refuses Hermes, then he’ll be in violation of the Accords. He’s between a rock and a hard place, and it’s his own damn fault. It took less than twenty-four hours for this whole thing to go tits up.

Damn it, he hates it when Grace is right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys are seriously the best xoxo


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _in which no one worries about the Valdezinator_

“Came as soon as I could, boss,” Leo says, checking around him before he ducks into the old warehouse. They’re less than a block away from the Counterterrorism Center, but Jason couldn’t risk going any farther. Nico was starting to regain consciousness. Hopefully the CTTF will assume he’s smart enough to leave the area right away and not bother to look for him in Berlin.

Hopefully. 

“It was pretty hard to find you--do you know how many warehouses there are around here?” Leo goes on, removing his jacket and shaking it out. “Couldn’t find our weapons, by the way.” He grimaces. "They must have been moved."

“It’s okay, you did what you could,” Jason reassures him. “Everything was kind of chaotic, anyway. Do you have any new info?”

“Piper’s okay, as far as I can tell,” Leo says. “They were bussing her to a hospital; she was still alive, anyway.” He pauses. “I feel like shit, leaving her.”

“Me too,” Jason mumbles. He’s felt like shit for a while now, though that might have as much to do with his shoulder, which he had to set back in place twenty minutes ago and is now bruising. 

“Other than that . . .” Leo shrugs. “They’re coming, Jase. You didn’t snitch someone’s peanut butter crackers, here, you helped a known criminal and then escaped with him. We’re outlaws now, and the CTTF is going to be coming down with full force--not that I know what their full force is, since they’ve just formed, but that doesn’t mean I’m eager to find out.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason says. “You can still . . . I mean, you didn’t sign or anything, but that's because you didn't get a chance--”

“Naw, I’m not leaving, man,” Leo replies. “Someone’s gotta have your back.”

Jason isn't going to argue that. He claps Leo on the shoulder. “Thanks, pal.” 

From behind him, Nico groans. 

“Ooh, Sleeping Beauty is waking up,” Leo says, moving past Jason. “That’s an interesting rig you’ve got there--explanation?”

“It was all I could come up with,” Jason says, spinning to size up the makeshift vice he constructed. It’s basically a compilation of the biggest, heaviest things he could find rigged up to the pulley system left behind in the warehouse. It isn’t pretty, but he broke a sweat putting together so it should keep Nico from getting free and attacking them, if he’s still in the mood for that. 

“I can’t believe we all think you’re dumb,” Leo says. “I mean, this is physics and engineering and strategy all balled up in one ingenious contraption.”

“I just didn’t want Nico to escape,” Jason replies. 

Leo rolls his eyes. “Oh, right. That’s why we think you’re dumb--the whole heart-before-head thing.”

Nico’s eyes slide open. He looks limp and un-fight-ready, and when he lifts his gaze to Jason’s, Jason knows. This is Nico again.

He crouches before his friend. “Sorry about the weights,” he apologizes. “I didn’t know who I’d be seeing when you woke up. You’ve got to stop this Jekell and Hyde, act, man. It’s scaring me.”

“Scares me, too,” Nico says roughly. He looks so tired. 

Jason’s heart is aching worse than his arm. 

“Um--I’m here, too,” Leo offers. “Anybody worried about the Valdezinator?” 

Jason would shoot him a look, but that would require taking his eyes off Nico, and neither of them seems able to handle that right now. 

“Did I kill anybody?” Nico asks. He sounds so resigned to it; so hopeless. It’s the worst thing anyone’s said to Jason all day.

“No,” he says at once. “No, I don’t think so.”

Nico closes his eyes. “Good,” he sighs. “Jason, I’m--” he bites his lip. “I’m sorry. About everything. You should just let them lock me up, you know. It’s safer.”

“After today, they don’t want to jail you,” Leo says. He crosses his arms, his usual smile absent. He looks different without it; harder. “They’re out for blood, I’d put money on that. If the CTTF doesn’t put you down, it’ll be Clarisse and her country of seriously primitive justice systems. And if not either of those, then Annabeth--ow!” He shuts up as Jason whacks him in the leg. “What was that for?”

“What about Annabeth?” Nico asks, frowning. “Did I do something to her?”

“Nearly killed her girlfriend,” Leo snorts, and then yelps again as Jason hits him, harder this time. 

The little color that was left in Nico’s face drains out. “Who?” he asks, eyes searching Jason’s face. “What did I do?”

“You don’t remember?” Jason stalls. 

Nico stares at him. “I don’t trust my memories,” he says softly. “I want you to tell me.”

He can’t say it in a way that won’t hurt Nico, because he can’t brush it off like it’s nothing. It’s big. It’s terrible. Jason manages to look away from Nico long enough to appeal to Leo. “Can we have a minute?” 

“Oh, yeah, sure,” the engineer says at once, moving away. “I’ll, uh, call some friends.”

Jason turns back to Nico. “I can release you, right?” he asks. “You won’t run away?”

Nico shrugs. “Like you said, where could I go?”

Jason straightens up, fiddling with the pulley system. “So you do remember some,” he says conversationally.

“The closer it is to when I come out of it, the more likely I’ll remember,” Nico says. “Or, if something particularly important or jarring happens.” 

Jason grits his teeth and wraps the pulley chain around both of his hands. “When you can manage it, move your arm,” he says. “Cause I’ll be dropping this pretty quickly.”

He yanks down on the chain, the effort nothing after his bought with the helicopter, his shoulder twinging with mild, completely ignorable pain. Nico slides his arm down to his side and says, “Now!”, and Jason releases the load. The _SLAM_ is loud enough that Leo looks around from where he’s standing a few yards away, but once he sees that no one’s hurt or attacking, he goes back to his phone.

Jason drops to the ground next to Nico, who folds his knees to his chest. 

“Now tell me,” he says. “Tell me what I did. I can handle it.”

“You hit Piper,” Jason says, the words making it real in his mind. “You must have had her in your fist . . . the vibranium one . . . while you punched her with the other. It looked like her skull . . .” 

It had looked like her skull was a chocolate orange, the outer shell crushed by a child’s careless thumb. There had been a visible dent. Jason clamps his hand over his mouth, unable to continue. His face is contorting, automatically containing the urge he has to break down and cry. Like Percy said, they don't cry.

Nico takes a deep breath. It feels like he’s breathing for both of them, since Jason will probably make an unmanly noise if he lets out the air in his lungs. “Piper is the girl you’re always with?” he wants to know. “The annoying one with the spider bites?”

“Spider bites?”

“Small pistols.” Nico holds up a hand in demonstration, his silver fingers mimicking a gun. He pulls his hand back, thumb bending over an invisible trigger. “Bang.”

“Yeah. That’s her--the Black Widow,” Jason confirms. 

Nico looks away from him. “I remember her,” he says. “She’s full of venom. They poisoned her like they did me.”

“Who?” Jason frowns. 

Nico just shakes his head, folding his arms over his bent knees. “What your friend said is right,” he says. “Someone’s going to come kill me eventually. You shouldn’t get involved.”

“You’re not allowed to have a death wish,” Jason declares. “I’m bullheaded and selfish and I don’t care about your feelings, so I’m staying, dammit, and whoever comes for you can have you over my dead body.”

Nico digs his fingers into his knees, his eyes practically boring a hole into the ground. “Everywhere I go, death follows,” he murmurs. “If you care about me, help me end the cycle, Jason.”

Jason wants to touch him, but he’s not sure that would be welcome. Nico’s completely folded into himself. So instead he asks, “How did you get out, Nico? Why did you suddenly escape?”

“I was ordered to,” Nico mumbles. “I remember that much.” He glances back at Jason, holding his gaze. “I wasn’t in control. There are . . . words. Phrases. I’ve been conditioned to respond to them whether I want to or not. They change me . . . turn me into him.” He bites his lip. “No one’s used that method to control me for decades. I don’t know who found them, but there’s someone who--there’s someone that--” he breaks off. “It’s bad. It’s just bad.”

“Who would want to control you? Why?” Jason muses.

Nico laughs bitterly. “Want a list?” 

This time, Jason gives in and touches him, laying his palm on Nico’s shoulder. He curls his fingers, feeling the flesh and bone under the soft material of Nico’s sweatshirt. “If someone’s after you, all the more reason for me to stay,” he says. “I can help you, Neeks. We can help you,” he adds, remembering Leo.

Nico passes a hand over his face. He doesn’t reply. 

“Do you think you can remember any more?” Jason presses. “About the person who . . .” he flounders for the right term.

“Activated me?” Nico suggests. “Flipped the psycho switch? Triggered my conditioning? No.”

“They just ordered you to escape?” Jason asks. “That’s how? How did they get to you? You were locked up--”

“Jason.” Nico presses his hands to his ears like a child. “Stop.”

“But--”

“I’m trying, okay, just _shut up_.” 

He sounds so much like his old self that Jason obeys, clamping his hands onto his thighs and going completely still. 

“I had a mission,” Nico mumbles. “He wanted to know where I took it.”

“Took what?” 

Nico lets his hands drop, his eyebrows knotting together. “The blood samples. The ones they used to create the others.”

The _others_?

“Leo,” Jason calls. “I think you should get back over here.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _there was a point to this chapter . . . somewhere . . ._

“It was the early nineties,” Nico says, hugging his sides like that might protect him from the murderous looks Leo’s shooting him. Jason can’t say he blames the engineer; one Winter Soldier was bad enough. This is shaping up to be hell itself. “Jackson Industries was just starting to branch out from genetics into weaponry.”

“They’d been blending the two since my day,” Jason interjects, for Leo’s benefit. 

“You were gone by then,” Nico tells him. “But they--Jacktech--had samples of your blood, somehow. They were trying to extract the chemical compounds in it and recreate the serum.” He doesn’t have to specify which serum; in all of their minds, there’s only one. “Hydra had only the incomplete formula that Octavian provided, so they dispatched the Winter Soldier to retrieve the samples.”

“Oh my God,” Leo says suddenly. “Percy’s--”

“Don’t,” Jason interrupts. “Don’t ask, Leo.”

“But--”

Jason glares at him. He shuts up. 

Nico watches the exchange wordlessly, and when he has their attention again, he continues, no comment on the spat. “Then the experiments began,” he says. “Six people were chosen to undergo the same treatment we did. Only . . . it didn’t work.”

“They died?” Jason asks hopefully. Never thought he'd hope for the deaths of six individuals before, but that would be the best case scenario in all this.

Nico shakes his head. “Like me, they were . . . mentally unstable by the end of the process,” he says. “Unlike me, they didn’t have Octavian to beat, manipulate, and brainwash them into submission. They couldn’t be controlled.” He shrugs. “I’m not sure what happened, but I remember the experiment was declared a failure. I--” he hesitates. “It was the only time that I failed a mission. At least, until you.” 

“But you got the serum,” Leo says. “That’s not a failure.”

“Not that mission,” Nico shakes his head. “My next one. They ordered me to kill the failed soldiers--and I couldn’t. I remember being overpowered, scared; and then nothing.” He looks at Jason, his eyes darkening. 

“This is so _frustrating_!” he says, the outburst startling the other two. “I want to remember, but all I have is pieces! I can’t even tell where one memory begins and another ends! Did we go to Coney Island once, or multiple times? You’re wearing two different jackets. Was that before I broke my collarbone, or did I just forget about the pain that day? Whose mother died first? Why do I have so many fucking funerals in my head?!”

Leo edges away. “I’ll be, uh, elsewhere again,” he suggests. “You have fun with this, J.”

Jason glowers at his cowardly back, then reaches over to pat Nico’s arm.

“We only went to Coney Island once,” he says. “You gave me your coat because you were afraid I’d catch cold. We stayed out too late and your mother tanned both of our hides. We didn’t get a chance to go again that summer because you broke your collarbone, or the next because your sister died.”

“Bianca.”

“Yes.” Jason rubs his friend’s forearm encouragingly. “There have been a lot of deaths, buddy. That’s why the funerals.”

“How do you do it?” Nico whispers. “How do you keep everyone in your head? They all want to break out of mine . . . they want to take over my mind.”

Jason gives in to impulse and wraps both of his arms around Nico, pressing Nico’s head to his shoulder. He curves his own head into Nico’s neck, his nose in the other boy’s hair. 

Nico’s body isn’t the body he remembers, the body that still shows up in his dreams sometimes; his chest and shoulders are broader, with noticeable muscles curling around his bones, but Jason flattens his hand in the space between Nico’s shoulderblades and pretends he doesn’t notice. 

Or maybe he just accepts that this is Nico now, this is Nico’s body, and he must love it the same way he loved the old Nico. 

Nico’s arms slowly come up to return the hug, his grip lopsided and unfamiliar. There’s a steel brace at Jason’s back, and his other hand is bigger, gathering Jason’s shirt in a big fist that yanks it up over his waistband in a not-entirely-nonsexual way. Jason feels him swallow.

“I just let something else fill my mind,” Jason says, not intending his voice to come out as rough as it does. Nico actually shivers, and goosebumps break out on Jason’s skin. 

“That wasn’t entirely what I meant,” he mutters. “I was talking about, like, heroing and stuff, not . . . what you’re thinking of.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking of?” Nico whispers.

It’s Jason’s turn to swallow, and he answers into the skin under Nico’s ear. “I always know what you’re thinking. Even now.”

His heart is pounding like crazy, and it terrifies him. This isn’t some gal; this isn’t even some random fellow. This is Nico, and--and--and he isn’t just anybody. 

Well, of course he isn’t. Jason doesn’t get this worked up over just anybody. Jason’s only ever gotten this worked up over Nico, and he didn’t even realize it before but it’s just this side of abnormal. 

“I remember . . . things,” Nico murmurs. His vibranium hand migrates to the back of Jason’s neck, and he holds it tightly--but unlike when the boy was trying to strangle him, Jason gets a thrill of excitement from the contact of cool metal against his skin. “Things I want to do. I’ll do it if you don’t stop me, Jason.”

“Do . . . what?” It’s a miracle, really, that his heart is still beating so loudly when he’s hardly breathing. His nerves are tingling, all the way down into the pit of his stomach, and it’s so close, so hot, he’s going crazy from the simplest thing in the world. There’s clearly something very wrong here. 

Nico pulls back, robbing Jason of contact he didn’t realize he’d miss, and Jason looks him full in the face. Nico’s shaggy hair brushes his cheekbones, his eyes highlighted with shadows and sleepless creases, but Jason’s never seen anything more wonderful in his life.

And then Nico kisses him.

Jason’s been kissed before--in theory. The who and when of those incidents totally escapes him, but he knows he has, it’s just . . . he just . . .

Nico breaks contact, something like uncertainty in his face, and he drops his hands from Jason. “Do that. The only thing constant in my memories . . . is that I want to do that.”

Jason leans forwards, unwilling to let Nico get away with the words. He wants to say something witty and leading, like that he wants to ‘do that’ until Nico forgets why he ever stopped, but that would require two things he doesn’t posses at the moment: a) breath and b) higher brain function. He grabs Nico’s face, completely without delicacy, and slides his lips over the corner of Nico’s mouth. 

Nico closes his eyes, turning into Jason to kiss him properly, pulling Jason’s hands away from his face to wrap around his neck instead. His shoulders flex as he pushes closer to Jason, his knee brushing the inside of Jason’s thigh. He kisses Jason again, and again, and again, and it’s better than any of Jason’s dreams. 

He kneads Jason’s side, encouraging his t-shirt back up, and Jason enthusiastically pulls back to strip it off, catching sight of the first real smile on Nico’s face. 

He practically tackles Nico to the ground, crazy at the glimpse of his old friend in what’s sometimes a stranger’s face, gasping into Nico’s mouth as his dick rubs against Nico’s thigh and promptly perks up. He’s not exactly hard, but it sure feels nice to grind against Nico’s leg. 

Nico holds him tightly, one hand at his neck and the other on his bare waist, subtly moving him the way he wants. Jason doesn’t mind. He can’t figure out why this didn’t happen sooner, but maybe that’s because he’s not thinking his actions through at this point. He’s caught up in the soft suck of Nico’s lips, the pulsing body under him, the strong hands that guide him the way they used to when he was younger, but in a much different way. 

Nico’s tongue works its way into his mouth, the slick, hot sensation making the blood rush to Jason’s head, which is good because he probably doesn’t want it rushing to other places. When he pulls back to breathe, Nico licks his own lips clear of excess saliva. 

Jason kisses him, close mouthed, and mouths his way down Nico’s jaw, prickled by the five o’clock shadow there. He finds the spot behind Nico’s ear where he whispered earlier, and sucks at it, not long enough to leave a mark but hard enough that Nico’s breath catches. 

He rolls his hips, unable to resist how good it feels, and Nico brings his leg up, encouraging the contact. His hand forces Jason’s waist down, to deepen the roll into a proper thrust that presses Jason’s balls back against his stomach and that shouldn’t feel right but fuck.

He brings his mouth back to Nico’s like he’s returning for a recharge, and Nico parts his lips at once, allowing him access.

“Um--I hate to break up the party--but this warehouse isn’t that big,” Leo says, and Jason nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Holy fuck--Leo!” he cries, scrambling away from Nico and fishing frantically around for his shirt. “You’re--we’re--I’m sorry, I forgot--”

His face is burning, and not in the same way that his abdomen was a few seconds ago. 

“I’m, uh, going to be over there,” Leo gestures to the far corner of the warehouse. “I’ll be back when you, um, settle down.” He scratches his neck, his own face pink, and turns his back.

Jason glances down, realizing that his semi-hard-on developed into a full blown one thanks to Nico’s involvement. Nico, while looking thoroughly messed up and begging to be fucked, has no such problem. His pants are flat. 

“How?” Jason demands. 

Nico shrugs. “More stamina?”

They stare at each other for a second, but Jason can’t maintain eye contact for long. Half of him wants to say screw Leo and jump back onto Nico, and the other half of him is completely mortified and screaming _where is your shirt you horny chucklewit?!_ That half wins out, and he yanks his tee back over his head quickly. 

“We need to get out of this city,” Leo calls, still standing a safe distance away. 

Nothing cools Jason off faster than remembering that Percy is being an ass and there’s someone out there who can control Nico like a puppet; shaking off the last traces of arousal, he gets to his feet and helps Nico up, wishing he wasn’t quite so aware of his old friend’s hands at the moment. 

“Okay, then, we need a plan,” he declares, and Leo grins.

“What do you think I’ve been doing while you were, uh, busy, bro?” he asks. “C’mon, we’ve got to meet a friend of mine.”

“A friend of yours?” Jason asks, surprised. “You have friends other than me?”

“Dude, I have all kinds of secrets,” Leo brags, and then winks. “Unlike you, who lays everything bare.”

Jason’s flustered for about ten seconds, then he remembers this is Leo and not somebody who actually cares. “You’re just jealous,” he scoffs. “I see through you like glass, pal.”

“He’s very jealous,” Nico agrees, surprising both of them. “Jealous of you, I mean.” 

Leo snickers. “When you aren’t trying to kill me or get in Jason’s pants, you’re pretty cool,” he says.

Nico gives a thin smile. “Thanks. I think.”

“Alright, let’s go,” Jason declares.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Bug Brigade spinoff? anybody?_

Jason opens the warehouse door and instinctively ducks, dragging Nico down with him.

“I’m not going to shoot you,” Annabeth says, exasperated. “Stand up, you look ridiculous.”

She props her hands on her hips, her blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She's in a sleeveless Kevlar vest and cargo pants; her merc look. Jason hasn't seen that in a long time.

“What are you doing here?” Leo demands. 

She jabs her thumb behind her, where a tiny blue Bug is idling. “I’m your ride.” 

Jason eyes her warily. “You’re not here to take us in?” he asks skeptically. “You have to have heard . . .” he trails off. If she didn’t hear, he doesn’t want to be the one to tell her.

“Nico brained Piper,” she says. “It’s cool. I’ve wanted to brain Piper before, too. Besides,” she shrugs. “I know a little something about mind control. I’m not without sympathy. So let’s go already, I feel too exposed.”

Jason looks at Leo, who shrugs. “I don’t know a thing about this, man,” he says. “But, y’know, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all.”

“I have your weapons in the trunk,” Annabeth calls over her shoulder, already halfway to the car, and that seals it for Jason. 

“I call shotgun,” he says. Leo groans, and Nico just looks puzzled. 

“Which one of you uses a shotgun?”

“He wasn’t talking about weapons,” Leo grumbles. “He just robbed us of any hope of leg room in that clown car.”

Jason would care, but he’s not sure he’d be able to stand being crammed in the back with Nico. In fact, he knows he wouldn’t. So he doesn’t feel remorseful in the slightest as he gets in the passenger side. 

Annabeth clicks her seatbelt in place. “Everyone comfy?”

From the extremely cramped backseat, shoving their legs out of each other's spaces, Nico and Leo both glare at her, and she grins. “Great. Let’s go.”

As she pulls away from the warehouse, Jason examines her profile, trying to read her expression. He doesn’t understand what she’s doing here, or why she isn’t insisting he take Nico back to the CTTF. 

Of course, he could do the sensible thing and ask. 

“Look, I know this is all a little sudden,” Annabeth says, as if reading his mind. “I’m not going to pretend that I’m wild about the situation, but you should know, Jase . . . if it comes to taking sides, I’m on yours. Piper, too.” Her eyes dart to the rearview mirror. “So Nico gets a second chance. But if you screw us over, pal, I’ll personally bring the forces of hell down on your head. I have an in with the king of the Underworld.”

Jason glances back at Nico, but he seems impervious to the threat. He props his feet on the back of Annabeth’s seat and yawns. 

Leo covers his grin with one hand. “So, Annie,” he says. “How is it that you know exactly where we’re going?”

She smirks. “I have my ways.”

“Does Percy have the same ways?” Jason asks, and her grin vanishes like free chocolate.

“He’s just doing what he thinks is right,” she says, turning the car down a side street. “Same as you. Don’t make him out to be the Sheriff of Nottingham or something.”

“You think your new bosses won’t order him to track us down?” he demands. “Because if it were me, I’d use him. There’s no one else on the planet who knows more about me, about how I think and where I’d go.”

“Not true,” Nico murmurs and, startled but not about to argue, Jason flashes him a smile. Nico catches his eye. “Well, I researched your strategies and attack patterns,” he explains.

“Oh. Right.” Jason turns to face ahead again, a little embarrassed. He’d kind of been hoping that Nico meant that he knew Jason, personally, better than Percy. But of course Nico wouldn’t say anything like that, because Nico doesn’t believe that. Jason doesn’t really believe it, either. 

“We could use that,” Annabeth says. “Nico, if you know what’s predictable about Jason, you can help us switch up our game plan--maybe avoid Percy altogether and get out of Berlin.”

Nico gives a quick nod. 

She pulls into a parking garage. “This is as far as I've got," she says. "Leo--where now?”

“Go up one more floor,” he instructs. “I told them to wait for us there.”

“Who?” Jason asks, feeling like he's the only one totally in the dark about this.

Leo just smiles.

Annabeth parks on the second floor, and Jason climbs out, followed by Leo and Nico, who both make a big deal of stretching and rubbing sore calves and necks. Jason can’t imagine two more different people, but like Piper and Annabeth, they seem to speak the same language without trying. That, or maybe they just both like to take the piss out of him.

Jason looks around. There’s a white van parked a few spaces away, a yellow Mini Coop across from them, and two blue sedans in equally bad states of disrepair. Not exactly a full house. 

“What is this place?” he asks.

Leo shrugs. “Just a parking garage. What were you thinking, we’d be headed to some top secret lair?”

“Uh, yes,” Jason and Nico chorus. Jason grins at him. Nico looks away.

“Well, this is it,” Leo throws his hands up. “Geez. Percy’s the one with the fancy resources; I take what I can get.” 

The back doors of the van open then, and two kids hop out. 

“Speaking of,” he mutters.

Jason’s never seen anything less reassuring in his life, and if these are Leo’s “friends”, then they’re all doomed. 

The girl looks like she can’t decide whether she’s goth or steampunk (and, thanks a two-hour lecture from Percy, Jason knows exactly what both of those are supposed to look like), with chunky black boots, red-streaked hair, and huge, retro flight goggles clamped over her narrow face. She has arm and knee pads clamped over her clothes, the brown leather scraped and outright ripped in places. 

On the other hand, the dark-skinned boy with her has opted for more of a Nutty Professor look, with a button-up shirt, khakis, and round Ozzy Osbourne sunglasses. He has a device too big to be a watch strapped on his left wrist.

Leo holds out his arm, introducing them. “The Kane siblings,” he says, gesturing to the two kids. “Sadie and Carter. They’re marginally more competent than they look.”

The girl--Sadie--glares at him through layers of black eyeliner. 

“But only marginally,” Annabeth says, folding her arms over her leather jacket. “I can’t believe this is your backup, Valdez.”

“What were you expecting?” Leo demands. "Magnus and Samira? Sorry--Asgard wasn't taking my calls."

“Maybe someone other than the brats who broke into our compound last year!” she exclaims.

“Whoa, back up, what?” Jason interjects, grabbing her shoulder. “They did what? When was this?”

She waves her hand at him. “You were gone, it was over in a few hours, no biggie.”

“Someone broke into our compound and you didn’t think to tell me?” he asks incredulously. 

She shrugs, and he transfers his attention to Leo, who looks sheepish.

“Things happened,” he offers. “We got busy, it slipped my mind.”

Jason opens his mouth to ask what, exactly, was more important than the breach of their only safe haven, but before he can, Carter Kane blurts out, "Are you really Captain America?"

Jason stares at him.

He fidgets. "It's just--you're so much more--wow. I'm a huge fan."

Sadie snorts. "What the hell are you talking about? You've always had a major hard-on for Iron Man, you goon."

"I can't like them both?"

"Uh, no. This is a war."

"It's not a war," Jason breaks in sharply. "Don't ever say that."

Awkward silence.

Leo clears his throat. "We should get moving. You guys have a plane, right?"

Jason catches Nico’s eye over Leo's shoulder. His face is blank, and as Jason watches, he looks away. For a frightening second, there’s nothing in Nico’s expression but the cold emptiness of the Soldier. 

Jason’s stomach aches. Is he ever going to really get Nico back? Or will he constantly be hit with reminders, in the most obscure ways, that the body in front of him--the body he clutched in his hands as if nothing else mattered--doesn’t entirely belong to his old friend?

Annabeth snaps her fingers in front of his face. “Jason! Are you listening?”

“Sure was,” he lies automatically, brushing by her to fall in step with Nico. He can feel her fuming behind him as they pile into the van. 

“We’re going to get you guys out of the country,” Carter says. “Obviously, commercial flights are out of the question, but we brought our own ride.” He flashes Jason a grin. “So all we need is a destination.”

“Going back to the compound is out of the question,” Jason says at once. "But there are still a handful of countries not part of the U.N.--"

Beside him, Nico goes still, frozen in the act of climbing into the back of the van. 

Leo clicks his tongue. “What? What is it, boy?” he asks, patronizing. “Did Timmy fall in the well?”

Jason glares at him and lightly touches Nico’s shoulder. “Nico--” 

Nico opens his mouth, but what comes out is a stream of German. Jason, his foreign language skills fairly rusty, only catches every few words: _cold. pain. grace. war. blood._

“Jason,” Leo says nervously. “Seriously. What’s he doing?”

Jason doesn’t have a clue. His attempts to interact with Nico are, if not rebuffed, then ignored; no matter what he does, Nico continues in his one-sided conversation. 

Annabeth shoulders her crossbow, leveling it at Nico’s head. 

“Hawkeye,” Jason snaps.

“What? I’m being prepared,” she replies. “The last time I let my guard down and this guy was around, he almost killed the Director.”

Nico’s gaze snaps to her. “Kill the Director,” he echoes, in English. “Kill Captain America.”

“You just had to say something,” Leo says to Annabeth. She cocks the bow. 

“Give me a reason to not shoot you, di Angelo.”

“Okay, that’s enough. Put that down,” Jason orders. He shoves Nico into the van, the boy’s back warm and hard under his distracted hand, and narrows his eyes at Annabeth. “Point a weapon at him again and it’ll be the last bow you ever shoot.”

She gives him the same disbelieving look that Piper loves to give--the ‘are-you-fucking-serious-right-now’ look. “Are you fucking serious right now?” she asks. 

“He didn’t do anything,” he growls. “He’s had a couple thousand opportunities and he hasn’t made a move against any of us. I’m not going to stand for members of my team threatening each other.”

“But it’s okay for you to threaten me?” she demands. “We aren’t the Avengers, Cap, and you don’t call the shots. How do you get off on--”

“We really should go,” Sadie interrupts. She’s standing in front of the van, looking down at the parking lots below the garage. She beckons Jason over and points to a stream of black-clad figures approaching like a line of ants. They don't look like they're here to pick up a car.

Jason and Annabeth pile into the van and slam the back doors shut, and Sadie gets into the passenger’s seat next to her brother. In the back of the van, Nico is sitting with his knees clenched to his chest, his sweatshirt hood covering his head down to the tip of his nose. 

Jason sits next to him, bracing him as the van lurches out of its parking spot. He tugs on Nico’s sleeve. “Hey. Are you yourself?”

Nico shakes his head, but he pulls his hood back and shoves his messy hair out of his eyes. “I remembered something,” he says. “After I escaped the Counterterrorism Center, I was supposed to go somewhere.” He furrows his eyebrows. “I think . . . they told me to go _Heimat_.”

Jason lets that one translate. It takes a second. “Home?” he asks. 

Nico nods.

“Brooklyn?”

“No.” Nico knocks his hand away, looking irritated at his touch. “Siberia. Where I was created. _Die Heimat des Winter Soldat_.”

“Then what?” Jason asks.

Nico rubs his eyes. “I don’t know,” he admits.


	16. Chapter 16

Considering that the earth is still rotating around the sun and no minor countries have been obliterated from the face of the planet, Percy isn’t having the mother of all bad days. But it’s up there. 

Hazel and Frank are flying in from New York, but Annabeth’s gone missing. Piper’s unconscious in a hospital bed, and Grover keeps indulging in his nervous habit of gnawing on the rim of a Coke can, despite Percy’s repeated warnings that this will eventually result in loss of teeth.

“I have some good news and some bad news, boss,” Aly says, reminding him of the last in his laundry list of problems; the CTTF agent who’s apparently attached to him by an invisible umbilical cord. He usually doesn’t mind pretty girls following him around, but he has the sneaking suspicion that this one is keeping an eye on him for Hermes. 

“If you give me the bad news right now, I might off myself,” he grumbles, reaching for his third cup of coffee in the last hour. “So you’d better just tell me what’s good.”

“We just got in a record of an unauthorized flight across the border,” she says, hopping onto his desk and crossing her legs. She props her tablet up in her lap, presumably reading the report off the screen. “12:59pm, coming into the country. It landed in Schkeuditz, and the passengers were temporarily detained but then released.”

“Is this important?” Percy asks skeptically. 

She shrugs. “Well, probably not. But you did ask me to keep an eye on the borders and anybody going across them, and I happened to come across this.” She selects something on the tablet, enlarges it, and flips it around to show him. “That’s Annabeth Chase, right?”

The street cam is blurry, but it’s hard to mistake the girl who’s made a habit of hanging around his lab stealing weapons for the last three years. That, and she’s flipping the camera the bird. Not a lot of people who’d do that. 

“She rented a car in your name and went to a parking garage four blocks from this building,” Aly goes on. “An hour earlier, the two passengers from that plane also entered the garage. Also, I went ahead and checked them against your Friends and Enemies database; it turns out that they broke in to the Avenger’s compound about a year ago. Annabeth and Leo Valdez were the ones who caught them, but there isn’t any info on what happened afterwards.”

“I remember them,” Percy mutters, frowning. He massages his temples, trying to rub the relevant information from his brain. A year is a seriously long time, but it’s hard to forget a break-in. “Leo said they were harmless, so I put Ty on monitoring duty and forgot about ‘em.”

“Maybe Leo didn’t,” she suggests. “Or Annabeth. It’s possible that they called in those kids for help.”

“Guessing that we wouldn’t expect them to bring in outsiders,” he says. “I would have dismissed a couple of kids offhand, even if I was stringently watching the borders--how did you know to background check them?”

She shrugs. “A hunch?”

He stares at her for a minute. She blinks innocently back. 

“Well . . . keep following those hunches,” he says. “It looks like we have a lead. Where’s that plane again?”

“Schkeuditz. The Leipzig-Halle Airport,” she replies promptly. 

“The what-what?” he asks, and then shakes his head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to get there before Grace does. Maybe it’s not too late to talk some sense into him.”

“I’d say it’s about six years too late,” Grover says, coming into the room. He’s juggling three cans of soda and a brown bag. “Lunch, anybody?”

Aly hops down from the desk and relieves him of the bag and one of the sodas. “Awesome, roast beef and BLTs!” she exclaims. “Percy, which do you want?”

“BLT on rye, hold the mayo,” Percy and Grover say in unison. Grover grins sheepishly at him. “You’ve had the same thing since middle school, man,” he says. He turns to Aly. “His is on the top.”

She puts it on the desk and fishes out the sandwich, handing it to Percy. “Okay, so you have a regular sandwich order,” she says. “I’ll remember that.”

Percy unwraps the sandwich, spreading the wax paper on the desk to use as a plate. “Not necessary,” he says. “You won’t be here that long.”

“How do you know that?” she asks, cracking open her Coke. She jumps back onto the desk, and Grover settles down in the chair across from Percy’s. Percy can’t remember the last time he sat and ate with friends; it’s kind of nice, even if they are in the middle of a manhunt. 

“I just do,” he mutters.

Aly smiles, her hazel eyes crinkling at the edges. “Nice to be so certain,” she says sweetly, and takes a bite of her roast beef.

“Who are you, again?” Grover asks--100% sincere, but Percy laughs anyway. 

“She’s my babysitter,” he says. 

Aly doesn’t deny it. “I’m just making sure that everyone plays nice,” she says. “I like you, Percy. I don’t want to see you run into trouble.”

“She likes you,” Grover stage whispers. “That makes her the first girl in, like, _ever_.”

Percy flips him off. Aly snickers. 

“No girls like you?” she asks. 

“Plenty of girls like me,” he snaps. “Grover’s just jealous.”

“Excuse me?” Grover leans back in his chair, grinning like an idiot. “Which one of us goes home to a nice, home cooked meal every night? Which one of us has a wife waiting to rub his feet and draw him a bath? Oh, that’s right--me. I’m not jealous of jack shit, Mr. Playboy, I’m very happy where I am.”

“I’m not a playboy,” Percy feels the need to inform Aly. “I had a steady girlfriend for years. She just decided she’d rather date my company than me.”

“Ain’t your company anymore,” Grover mutters. “Seeing as you signed it over to her.”

Percy props his chin up with his hand and makes eye contact will Aly, raising his eyebrows to say _see what I have to deal with?_.

She chuckles, and it might be his imagination, but her cheeks go a little pink, too. Nice to know he still has it. 

“So,” she says, kicking her feet against the desk leg. “What made you sign over your company?”

“Oh, y’know,” he replies airily. “It was time for a change, and all that. Also, I was under the impression that I was destined for evil.”

“That was a hellish week,” Grover observes. “See, this genius tried to create life.”

“A mobile artificial lifeform,” Percy corrects. “An android. I was not playing God.”

“You were playing God,” his best friend says. “And then when it spectacularly backfired--which we all knew it would--he decided that he wasn’t fit to hold any kind of responsibility, so he handed his company over to his ex, resigned from the Avengers, and started crashing on my couch like the invertebrate slacker he is at heart.”

Aly’s eyes go round, and she leans closer to Percy, every inch the captive audience. “Then what happened?”

He sets his sandwich down as he remembers. “Jason.”

Percy had gotten to witness some of the tenacity that Jason usually aimed towards Nico; he’d been on the receiving end of Jason’s single-minded purposefulness for once. Jase refused to let him wallow, coming around and dragging him out for coffee, bashing him over the head with common sense, bombarding him with the same message over and over: _we need you_. 

He learned to send selfies just so he could fill Percy’s phone with pictures of himself and Leo, making puppy dog eyes in front of Percy’s abandoned lab equipment. He called at strange hours, insisting that Percy entertain him with complicated formulas or lengthy stories that Percy knew he couldn’t care less about. He went out of his way to let Percy know that they were family, and there was nothing either of them could do to escape that. 

And as much as Percy had been flattered, and enchanted, and finally able to glimpse what it was that made his father so fascinated with Grace, he’d kind of resented it, too. Because leaving the Avengers had been his decision, and it was none of Jason’s business to try and change that. 

“That narrow-minded right-wing bastard,” he growls now, the warm fuzzy feelings evaporating. “Everything always has to be his way. He couldn’t let me sit back and retire in peace.”

Grover licks a glob of mayonnaise off his lower lip. “As if anyone can actually retire from this gig,” he says. “You were sulking, Perce, and Jason saw that. He probably figured you just needed a little push to remind you you’re a hero at heart--and, what do you know? He was right.”

“But he’s not always right,” Percy argues. “Sometimes he needs to . . . sometimes he has to give in!”

“If he did that, would he still be Captain America?” Aly asks softly. She’s staring at her sandwich now, as if it reminds her of some great and tragic love she once had with a leaf of lettuce. Then she looks up, snapping out of the daze. “I mean, he’s known for being stubborn, right?” she adds, a little too brightly. 

“I can be stubborn, too,” Percy says. “He’s gotten his way for years now--it’s about time he learns to sit down and behave.”

“We hear you, buddy,” Grover tells him. “We’re on your side, remember?”

Percy looks around at them, his spectacular team. There’s his can-chewing sidekick and the wide-eyed new girl; not really an inspiring bunch. What, exactly, is he doing with his life that he can’t rally hoardes of people around him like Jason does? Nico came within an inch of killing Annabeth’s lover, and Jason still somehow managed--from miles away, no less--to convince her to help him. 

There’s a niggling feeling in his gut that Jason’s right, and that’s why everyone’s on his side, but he ignores it. Jason’s endangering lives with this little game; this time, he can’t be right. And once Hazel and Frank arrive, Percy’s going to show him the error of his ways.

Hopefully.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I swear to God, I am still here._

Jason wants to get out of Germany as soon as possible, but Annabeth insists they check into a hotel for the night. 

“Carter’s been flying for all of six months and I don’t trust his night vision,” she says. “Besides, I want to visit Piper.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Leo warns. “This is how outlaws get caught in, like, every western ever. This is how Bonnie and Clyde kicked it.”

“Is not,” Sadie argues. Sadie argues a lot--Jason’s had the chance to find that out in the three-hour drive it takes them to agree on a plan--and mostly just for the sake of it. “They were driving in a car.”

“No, they were in a motel,” Leo contradicts.

“That was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Annabeth puts in. “I remember--I saw a documentary.”

Jason bangs on the side of the van. “I don’t care who died how,” he declares. “Nobody needs to worry because that’s not going to happen to us. Right, Hawkeye?”

She shrugs, putting the van into park. “Probably not. "

They agree to split up and check in separately. Jason somehow winds up with Sadie; maybe because, with her blue eyes and blond hair, she could more convincingly be his sister than Carter's. He gives a false name, pays in cash, gets his key. Reigns Sadie in from her exploration of the lobby and drags her into the elevator. 

There isn’t any elevator music. Jason remembers a time when there was elevator music; his misses it. It filled up awkward silences nicely. 

“So, uh,” he begins. “Do you have . . .” _C’mon, Grace, what are you asking? Do you have special powers? Are you magical? Get a grip._

His inner voice has taken on a distinctly Percy-ish tone.

Sadie wiggles her fingers. “Am I a mutant?” she asks. “Gifted from the gods? Capable of supernatural things? Why yes, I am. Thanks for asking.” She bats her eyelashes, and then giggles at his expression. 

He decides it would be safer for him to stare at the chrome doors while talking. “What about Carter?”

“Carter--” she hesitates. “Carter’s just smart. Like Leo.”

Jason nods. “And the breaking-into-headquarters thing?”

Sadie fidgets. "Um. About that."

They arrive at the third floor right after that, and Sadie escapes without answering the question.

“I’m raiding the vending machine,” she announces. 

He lets himself in to 305. It’s nothing fancy, no different than any of the other hotel rooms he’s ever been in, and he honestly doesn’t care much about his surroundings as he goes in. He just wants ten seconds to be alone. 

He goes into the large bathroom, locking the door behind him out of habit, and heads for the sink. The tap water is pleasantly cool on his face as he washes up, though he can’t do much about the growing stubble on his chin. He rubs it speculatively, remembering when he used to despair of ever having facial hair. He’d gladly wish it away now. 

The stubble reminds him of Nico, of kissing Nico, of Nico’s face scraping against his. He remembers what happened with a jolt, and realizes that he’d managed to put it from his mind until now. It wasn’t a conscious decision; he just has a habit of shelving his personal feelings when others are around, when there’s a mission to focus on, and when Nico is involved. 

But he can’t really escape it now. He kissed his oldest friend. He fucking dry humped his oldest friend. And now he’s, what, hiding out in a crappy hotel waiting for Percy to track them down? Relying on Leo and his notoriously half-assed trains of thought, trusting Annabeth and her notoriously flip-flopping allegiances, counting on two teenagers with undisclosed powers and an abridged version of how they got there? And he kissed Nico.

He kissed him.

He looks in the mirror. His face is somehow craggier, tired lines making his nose sharper, his eyes deeper, and the planes of his face gaunt. Were his eyes always that color? Did his eyebrows slant down that much at rest? When was the last time he actually looked in a mirror, anyway? 

When was the last time he cared?

“So, you did it,” he says to his reflection. “Are you honestly surprised?” 

Well . . . no. The deep thing, the dark thing, the thing he has to tell himself not to think about; the thing that sometimes has him waking up from dreams he’d never admit to, and lashing out for reasons he’ll never explain; it’s out now. It’s escaped. 

Because the deep thing, the dark thing--Nico feels it, too. And all those times that Jason almost asked him, back in 1930-whenever, all those times he almost responded to the bait he wasn’t quite sure Nico was throwing out--they could have been doing this the whole time. 

He leans forwards, pressing his forehead to the mirror. What is he thinking about? Nico can hardly remember his own birthday, let alone what happened to them in the ‘30s. He’s gone through God-only-knows-what kind of torture. His mind is all twisted up--take the incident back in the parking garage. And there was what Bryce--

_Crack._

Jason pulls back, shocked, as the mirror splinters under his forehead. It takes him a second to realize that he was leaning so hard against the glass, he caused the break. There he goes, being irrational about Nico again. Percy’s right. 

Damn.

Percy’s _right._

He groans, and someone bangs on the door. “It’s me!” he hears Sadie say. 

He leaves the bathroom and lets her in. She falls through the entryway with her arms loaded, Pringles and Kit Kats and Mountain Dews, and says, “Supper of champions. It is suppertime, isn’t it?”

“Close enough,” he chuckles, and helps her dump the food onto the small table in the corner. “Have the others gotten in yet?”

“Dunno,” she shrugs. “Let’s go down and check out the pool before we eat.”

Sadie chatters the whole way down and heads off to the pool as soon as they’re on the ground floor, but Jason lingers in the lobby for a second, spotting Leo’s curly head just coming through the front door. 

“--good times never felt so good!” Leo croons, loudly and out of tune. He’s leaning on Nico, and playfully yanks the other boy’s hood over his head as they pass under the security camera. “IIIIIIIIIIIII’ve been inclined to believe they’d never wouuuuuuuuuuld!” 

“Sweeeeeeeeet Caroline!” Carter joins in, his voice deeper than Jason remembers from ten minutes ago. He slings his arms around Nico and Leo, and the three of them sway towards the front desk, laughing and singing and generally making a lot of noise. Even though it’s fake, the broad smile on Nico’s face sends a bullet straight through Jason’s stomach. He remembers when that smile was real. 

“I’d like--I want a---hey, gimme a room,” Leo says, breaking away from Nico and Carter to slam his palms on the desk. He commands all the attention, leaving his two companions free to wander away from the concierge’s eye. 

Jason drops into a chair to watch the show.

“Name?” the concierge asks, clipped. 

“Hotty McShizzleShorts,” Leo says, and guffaws. “That’s totally my stripper name, dude. Hey!” He snaps his fingers in the concierge’s face; the man had glanced past him, in Nico’s direction. “Lookit me! I wanna get a room! Here, I got cash.” 

He slams a stack of bills onto the counter. “C’mon, c’mon,” he whines. 

“Name?” the concierge repeats. 

“Smith,” Leo says impatiently. “Hurry up, we got hookers showing any minute now!”

The concierge hands him a key quickly, and Leo rounds up Carter and Nico, who were doing some kind of polka/foxtrot mix, and plows into the elevator. Jason tamps down a smile, and pretends to be reading some German fashion magazine. 

Sadie comes by a second later, bouncy about the pool, and they head upstairs. Jason hopes that Leo’s little show wasn’t too overboard; he gets the need to not look like they’re hiding, but there’s a difference between that and standing out. 

Nico’s outside 305 when they arrive on the third floor. His eyes fix on Jason at once, and never budge, not even as he addresses Sadie. “The others are in 314,” he says. “I need to talk to Jason alone.”

Sadie glances between them, then skips down the hall. Jason maneuvers past Nico to open the room, and then slips inside. 

“What’s up?” he asks, wishing there wasn’t an entire butterfly house loose in his stomach. 

Nico’s quiet for a long time. He hovers by the door, unmoving, following Jason’s absent fidgeting with the bedsheets, the spilled Pringles, the sole desk chair. 

“Siberia,” he finally says. “I remembered--a little, anyway.”

Jason stills at once. 

“There were six of them,” Nico goes on, softly. “I neutralized them. One in Prague. One in Amsterdam. One in--”

“I get it,” Jason interrupts. “You don’t have to remind me that you’ve killed, Nico--”

“They aren’t dead,” Nico says, anger flaring up in his tone. “They were put on ice, like me. As far as I know, they’re still there; in Siberia. Whoever activated me was after that information--whoever did it, knows where they are. And they wanted me to go there, to--to free them.”

He gives Jason a second to let that sink in, then says, “Six of me, Jason. Six of me, but me without you. Me without anything good, anything worth redeeming. We can’t let that happen.”

“What are you suggesting?” Jason asks, letting the “me without you” comment slide. For now. 

Nico doesn’t reply. He probably figures that his silence says enough, and he’s right. 

He wants to kill them. 

Jason passes a hand over his face. “Has this become the solution to everything?” he asks, more or less rhetorically. “Leo proposed I kill you, when you first surfaced as the Winter Soldier. A few days ago, Percy and Clarisse demanded the same thing. And now you’re saying we need to kill six innocent people.”

“They aren’t innocent,” Nico replies grimly. 

“That could be you!” Jason exclaims. “It could easily be you, put under because you couldn’t be controlled! We don’t know anything about these people, about what their lives were like before. It can’t be our decision, whether they live or die.”

“You have the same naive view of the world as always!” Nico fires back. It’s like someone flipped a switch and suddenly, he’s mad. “I’m not innocent either, Jason! I deserve to die as much as them! Trust me, we’d be doing them--and the world--a favor!” 

“You’re still innocent to me!” Jason shouts, and then remembers he probably shouldn’t be making a scene when he doesn’t know how thin the walls are. 

Nico shakes his head. “Naive,” he repeats, and catches Jason’s eye. “Yeah, I remember,” he answers the unspoken question. “Some, anyway. Not everything. It doesn’t matter, though; it doesn’t change what I did.”

Jason approaches him, slowly, as if he’s an easily spooked animal. “You’re right,” he admits. “But you’re wrong, too.” He reaches out, resting his hand on Nico’s collarbone.

Nico’s breath shivers his chest, makes the hair on the back of Jason’s hand stand on end. He has to take a second to remember what he was doing. 

He unzips Nico’s sweatshirt and pulls down the collar of the t-shirt underneath, lacing his fingers around the string of beads he knew would be there.

“You took this rosary from me, remember that?” he asks.

Nico nods.

“Do you remember what it means?”

Nico bites his lip. “It’s different, Jason--”

Jason tightens his hold on the rosary, pulling it taut against Nico’s throat. “You gave me this before you went to war, and it was a promise. You promised you’d come back, and I promised that we’d still be family. I don’t break my word, Neeks--do you?”

“I’m not back,” Nico mutters, turning his head away. “I might be here, but I’m not back. Don’t feel obligated to hold up your end of the bargain.”

“Dammit, Nico,” Jason growls. “You think you’ve sinned? Fine--let me give you forgiveness.”

“It’s not yours to give,” Nico snaps, and he looks like himself for a minute; the old Nico, the one who talked about faith and penance and the Holy Mother and Jason, _don’t you throw rocks at that cat because it’s God’s creature and I’ll tell Mama on you_. “You said that Leo and Percy and Clarisse all wanted you to kill me? Your friends seem to understand what you don’t--I’m a murderer, Jason. I’m not being dramatic. It’s a fact. And you’re ignoring it.”

“I’m Captain America, I can believe whatever the fuck I want!” Jason cries. “I already said, I absolve you of--”

“NOT YOU!” Nico practically shrieks, and breaks out of Jason’s hold. “I can’t take that from you, okay?! I will not have you take responsibility for the things that I’ve done! You can’t, Jay-Jay, you just can’t!” 

Jason’s so startled by the outburst, he almost doesn’t register that Nico just reverted to his childhood pet name. Nico stalks away from him, pacing the room like a restless cat. 

“Well, what can I do?” Jason asks him, helpless. “I’m getting sick of everyone telling me that what I’m doing is wrong. I’m trying my best, here.”

“You--you just--” Nico gestures randomly. Jason hopes that Nico’s mid-air strangling isn’t an indication of what he can do. Nico’s hands fall to his sides, and he stops moving so frantically. “You can just come here,” he sighs.

Jason strides to him at once, and Nico spreads his arms expectantly. “ _Non ti lascerò mai_ ,” he murmurs, as Jason obediently bends into his chest. It’s the same thing Nico said before he went off into the army. Jason clutches Nico to him and hopes that’s a good sign. 

Nico rubs circles in his back, his vibranium hand firm at the base of Jason’s neck. His sweatshirt zipper digs uncomfortably into Jason’s chin, and after a second, his back begins to ache, but he doesn’t move. 

He’s melting, slowly but surely. He’s melting like a strawberry ice cream cone in August and he doesn’t give a rat’s ass. He holds on to Nico until he’s practically hanging from the boy’s frame and he doesn’t let go. 

He doesn’t realize how close to tears he is until he speaks and his voice cracks. “I got all gummed up,” he says. “Since that day . . . since I froze, I haven’t worked right. Percy thawed me out, but it always felt like some crazy dream. I kept waking up, thinking I was going to be back home. But I never did . . . I lost it all, Neeks. I was supposed to save it, but I lost it all.”

“You’re talking to the guy with one arm,” Nico says dryly, and Jason chokes on a laugh.

“Sorry.” 

There are other things. He wants to tell Nico how much he missed him, how strange the world looks to him still. He wants to reminisce about Bianca and Maria, just to prove they were real. And he wants to ask about Hydra, and hear every scrap of what Nico remembers, and he wants to do so many things but mostly right now, he just wants to kiss Nico again. 

He turns his face into Nico’s neck, feeling the flush of warm skin. “Can I?” he whispers. 

Nico shakes his head.

“Why not?” 

“For starters, Leo and Sadie are listening outside the door,” Nico says, and Jason stiffens in surprise. “What?”

“Go look,” the former assassin suggests. 

Half disbelieving, Jason goes to the door and peers through the peekhole, met with a flash of red hair and one of Leo’s weirdly pointed ears. He throws the door open in time to catch the two tearing back down the hallway.

“Hooligans!” he bellows. “You damn kids!”

Leo’s laugh echoes in the empty hall. For a second, everything is lighthearted; perfect. Nico’s presence is warm at Jason’s back, and his friends horse around, ducking in and out of 314, making a ruckus as though nothing in the world is wrong. 

He turns back to Nico. “What do I have to do?” he asks. “To keep things this way? Tell me what to do.”

Nico’s face hardens. “We leave Berlin tomorrow. And we kill those Soldiers. It’s the only way.”

It cuts Jason up, but this time, he doesn’t have it in him to disagree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hugs and kisses to everyone who's still with me! thanks for following/kudoing (is that a word)/commenting/clicking-even-if-by-accident-then-backspacing-because-you-wanted-the-story-above-mine-about-Nico-the-Omega-or-whatever <3


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _no longer sure what I'm doing here._

Jason isn’t expecting to just stroll into the hanger and pick up the Kane siblings’ plane, and he isn’t disappointed. Halfway through his trek across the pavement, Percy descends from the sky like some kind of mecha god, his face plate retracting as his feet hit the ground. Like Jason, he looks underslept and running on fumes. 

“You found me,” Jason states the obvious. 

“Last chance, Jase,” Percy says, not wasting any time with hello or whatever it is you say when gearing up for a big confrontation. “Come on. We can still walk away from this. You’re my best friend, I don’t want to fight you.”

It’s strange; Jason remembers saying close to the same thing to Nico. He wonders if Nico felt like this then. 

“You’re the one making this a battle,” he says. “I mean, I agree. We don’t have to fight. You could let me go on my way.”

Percy grimaces. “They aren’t going to let me just step aside here, Cap. The only one with wiggle room is you.”

“That isn’t my fault,” Jason observes. “If you hadn’t signed the Accords, none of this would have happened.”

“If you _had_ signed, none of this would have happened!” Percy counters. 

“You’re the one making me choose sides,” Jason says. “You know me, Perce. Do you really think I’d hand over a friend?”

“I’m your friend,” Percy insists. “I--dammit, Jason, I need you as much as he does. I need you more!” 

It’s Jason’s turn to grimace. “You don’t know what you’re saying. They’re going to kill him.”

“He deserves it!”

“Since when is that your choice?” Jason challenges. He clenches his fist tights around the leather grips of his shield, grateful that Annabeth managed to snag his armor while she was packing up weapons. With the inflexible mask digging into his face, he feels less like Jason Grace and more like Captain America, and he needs a good strong dose of that if he’s going to face down Percy. “Making a call on who lives or dies--c’mon, Perce. That isn’t us.”

They face each other for a moment--just them, alone on the tarmac. Jason has Leo in the air, and Annabeth and the rest still back in the van, ready for his signal, but he doesn’t give it just yet. He searches Percy’s face, looking for an inch that might give. Part of him doesn’t really believe they’ll fight. They’ve disagreed countless times, sometimes resorting to fists to resolve it, but inevitably one of them will acquiesce. There’s always been a compromise before.

Jason can’t make out a hint of compromise in Percy’s eyes.

“You were hurt once, I get it,” he tries anyway. “But Nico isn’t Hades--”

“You’re so blind!” Percy bursts out. “You trust Nico without a second thought, but you’ve spent the past four years riding my ass about everything! I have to put up with your disappointed looks every time we’re in the same room, your pointed little remarks about my past, you basically expecting me to be perfect or else lecturing me like you’re my dad or something, which you’re not! I’ve been busting my ass for the past six months, trying to make up for what happened in Sokovia, and I still feel like you haven’t forgiven me--while your old buddy Nico here gets a free pass for sixty years of murder!”

Jason opens his mouth to reply, but Percy isn’t done.

“Nico isn’t the only one who’s had it rough, y’know,” he rants. “I’ve had a pretty terrible year, too. But as usual, you didn’t even notice that--you were thinking about Nico. I’ve had enough, Cap. You can ignore and belittle me all you want, and you can hold Sokovia against me for the rest of our lives, but I’m not going to let you bend reality to suit your personal needs. Nico pays for his crimes; that’s all there is to it.”

“You never even gave him a chance,” Jason growls, and tosses his shield to the side. He hardly notices it clatter to the ground as he charges at Percy, both hands outstretched like a Scooby Doo villain.

Percy shoots him, point blank, with a repulsor beam.

It hurts like a motherfucker, and Jason isn’t exaggerating that. He feels like a ten-ton load of concrete just smashed into his chest and his irate mind thinks _why did you just do that, stuuuuuupid?_

Because he’s pissed, that’s why. Percy is being a tool and he’s had enough. The world doesn’t just revolve around Iron Man--they’ve all had it rough. Jason’s not thinking, he’s not strategizing, he’s just reacting.

Grover drops down next to Percy, his own repulsor beam focusing on Jason. “Stop it,” he says. “You’re alone and outnumbered.”

Jason chokes on a laugh. He’s not serious, right?

He holds two fingers in the air, and Leo swoops down at once. The van gang all burst out, coming nobly to his rescue, or something like that.

“Alone?” he asks, chuckling despite the pain in his chest. “As if.”

Percy rolls his eyes. “When this is over, remember that you were the one who started it,” he says, and Hazel and Frank materialize at his side. Whichever way you count it, Percy’s the outnumbered one; but he has a witch and a ghost, whereas Jason has two teenagers and a snarky mercenary. Plus one amnesiac assassin and Leo, who defies categorization. It’s anyone’s game.

A fourth person appears next to Percy, not from the air or ground, but from behind a nearby shipping crate. Jason would be wondering why on earth someone would hide behind a shipping crate for a dramatic entrance if he wasn’t busy being really pissed that--

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” he exclaims. “Clarisse la Rue?!”

The costumed princess hisses at him. 

“She agreed to sign the Accords,” Percy says. “Because, y’know, she isn’t deluded enough to think that siding with Nico di Angelo is a good idea.”

“She’s motivated by revenge,” Jason shoots back. “I might be delusional, but at least I’m emotionally stable.”

“In what world?”

Nico picks up Jason’s shield and hands it to him silently. When their gazes connect, Jason can clearly read the plea there. They have to get into that hangar--they have to stop the other Soldiers. Any lingering guilt that Nico felt, any inclination to turn himself in, is gone in the face of the immediate threat. 

Jason nods. 

“Say it,” Leo mutters, from his other side. “You know you want to say it.”

“Don’t worry, I’m saying it,” Jason replies grimly, and raises his shield in preparation to attack.

“Avengers--ASSEMBLE!”


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _a. this is short._  
>  b. just . . . sorry.  
> c. THANKS FOR READING! 

Jason sees the battle in flashes, never able to catch more than a few seconds of the big picture before being dragged into the one-on-one skirmishes around him. It’s more of a brawl than anything else. He loses track of who he slings his shield at--was that glint of metal Nico’s arm, or Grover’s armored leg? Are the beams of light glancing off the vibranium Percy’s repulsor beams or the strange, laser-like energy that Frank channels? He throws Clarisse off his back only to be accosted by Hazel, who hurls him into Sadie with a flick of her wrist. 

He sees Leo shoot into the air, closely followed by Grover, and then loses them as Percy slams into his ribcage, hitting the soft spot Jason always forgets to protect. He knows Jason’s Achilles’ heels, all of them. 

But Jason knows his, too. He seizes Percy’s shoulder, prising his fingers under the crack in the armor plates and finding the elasticized cotton that allows the suit to bend. He tears the entire shoulder panel off, sending Percy reeling into Annabeth, whose arrow shoots off in a spectacularly wrong direction and embeds itself in Carter’s thigh.

He yanks it out, shouting something obscene, but Jason is too occupied with the opening the distraction gives him to make out what it is. He socks Percy in the jaw.

“It’s always him,” Percy shouts out, through a mouthful of blood. “He’s gotten in your head, Jason, and you need to get him out!”

“Or maybe I need to quit listening to you,” Jason growls back. 

“Oh, gee, must be Tuesday,” Percy says sarcastically. He’s (thankfully) silenced by some projectile of Sadie’s, a white, sticky version of the polyester “spider webs” Jason sees in stores around Halloween. 

Hold the phone.

Did she just shoot a spider web?

Jason whips around to ask her, but she’s gone, locked in a wrestling match with Clarisse. Clarisse claws her across the arm, but abandons the spat in favor of latching on to Nico instead. 

Jason brains her with his shield, which probably was not its intended use, and she falls away from Nico, who whirls--thinking Jason is another attacker--and punches straight in the middle of the silver star. The resulting CLANG is loud enough to make everyone pause for a second. 

Jason examines his shield for dents. “Seriously, Neeks?” 

“A little help up here!” Leo shouts, and Jason and Nico both look up to see him still in battle with Grover, who (as far as Jason can tell) is much better at maneuvering in midair. 

Nico seizes Jason’s shield and hurtles it into the air, so quickly that it’s nothing but a blur to Jason’s shocked eyes. The circle of vibranium whips towards Grover and, before he can even see it to dodge, lodges itself in the glowing core of his suit, splintering it to fragments.

“NO!” Percy screams, and at first Jason doesn’t get it. What’s the big--

Then Grover drops out of the air like a stone. No core, no power. No power, no flight. 

“Shit!” Leo, previously doing everything in his power to avoid Grover, now dives towards him, but it’s obvious that his wingpack doesn’t stand a chance against gravity. He just isn’t fast enough. 

Percy shoots past Jason like a bullet, the heat from his propulsion boots searing Jason’s face as he passes, his arms outstretched to catch his friend.

Nico seizes Jason’s shoulder. “We go. Now, while they’re distracted.”

Jason looks around at him, horrified. “But Grover--”

Nico shakes his head in disgust and pelts for the hangar. Stunned, Jason trips after him, too in shock to look back. He brushes past Hazel, who hardly registers his presence, and Annabeth, who does but steps aside.

“You’d better stop those fucking monsters,” she says. “Otherwise, none of this is worth it.” 

There’s a high, keening sound behind Jason, but he tells himself it isn’t Percy crying. Grover’s fine; he was caught in time. 

Jason’s so used to lying to himself by now, he hardly notices he’s doing it.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> . . . _this_ . . .

Percy is beyond wordless.

He sits in a waiting room, hands clasped between his legs, staring at the glass wall that separates him from Grover’s bed. They moved his friend from the ICU a few hours ago, but he knows that means jack shit. Just because Grover’s not going to die now, in this instant, in this exact second, doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods.

The battle keeps replaying in his mind. He saw Jason and Nico run; saw Annabeth let them go; but it all happened in a distant place, far removed from the circle of space where Percy sat with Grover’s head in his lap. The kid who, apparently, could shoot spider-webs out of her hands had started to cry, repeating over and over, “No one’s supposed to die--I don’t want to kill anybody--no one’s supposed to die.”

Percy hadn’t really paid attention after that. The others--Leo, Annabeth, the kids--could have run, but they didn’t. The boy with the Ozzie Osborn sunglasses came to sit next to Percy.

Percy can still remember the cool press of his hand, the soft, “We need to get everyone to a hospital,” the surprisingly composed nature of the teenaged boy. He was too young to be involved in all of this, and yet he showed more competency than Percy ever could. It was humiliating.

Aly comes into the viewing room, two paper bags in her hands. “I heard what happened,” she says, the sorrow in her voice poignant and real. “I would never have sent you there if I knew--”

“We would have gone,” Percy breaks in. “He would have gone. He’s stupid like that.” He gives her a half-hearted smile. “Doctors say he’ll live, probably. There’s no bleeding in his brain, which is a miracle. Not many people can take a direct hit from the Winter Soldier and get off so easy.” He looks down at his hands.

He misses Annabeth. She was taken away with the others, to God-knows-where. He could always count on her to ally with him--at least, before all of this. He understands why Leo and his strange, underaged friends sided with Jason; but Annabeth’s betrayal? That, he doesn’t understand. Surely she should be as outraged as he is--Nico almost killed Piper.

Aly sits down next to him, setting the bags aside. “You look terrible,” she observes. “Maybe you should sleep.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not letting this go. I can’t--” he breaks off, all of the things he wants to say choking him at once. He tries to order his thoughts. “I had someone, once . . . I guess I’ll start there. This guy I loved and trusted. He betrayed me, and it seems like nothing’s worked right in my life since then.”

He unclasps his hands, working his stiff fingers. “Well, that’s not really accurate. It’d be truer to say that I’ve ruined everything in my life since then, trying to fix what he broke. Trying to keep it from happening again. I can’t--I won’t let Jason be another name on the list of people who’ve disappointed me,” he says. “He’s supposed to be different. He’s supposed to be--” he halts again, his face heating up.

“You can say it,” Aly encourages him. “Trust me--I’m sure I’ve heard worse cases of stupid.”

Percy scowls at her. “That’s not reassuring.” He looks at his hands. “But, well . . . he was supposed to be the _one_. The guy who fixed everything I couldn’t. He was my hero when I was a kid, I grew up hearing nonstop about ‘the Amazing Jason Grace’ and I guess I still expect him to be . . .”

“Perfect,” Aly completes, and pats his shoulder. “Only he’s not, and it looks like he isn’t the only one having trouble seeing reality right now.”

“What?” Percy gives her a startled look.

“Your issue with Jason is that he refuses to see Nico for who he really is,” she tells him gently. “But at the same time, you aren’t seeing Jason for who he really is. He isn’t the paragon of human achievement that your father claimed to have created. He’s a confused, lonely man stranded in another time--he’s good at pretending he’s adjusted, but deep down? No one can adjust to that. He’s clinging to the one thing that makes sense, and that’s his heart. That’s Nico. You want to take Nico out of the equation, but Jason wouldn’t be the Jason you know without him.”

“Because you know Jason so well,” he snaps. “You’ve never even met the guy!”

Aly bites her lip. Something flashes in her dark eyes; anger, maybe? He can’t be sure. “You know what I know?” she asks. “That what we hate in other people usually turns out to be what we hate most about ourselves. Jason’s stubbornness galls you because you’re stubborn, and his loyalty to Nico rankles you because it reminds you of how loyal you are to him, and his overwhelming hero complex is so perfectly matched with your attachment issues that you can’t handle him having someone else in his life!”

“What the fuck do you know about it?” Percy demands, springing to his feet. He doesn’t know what that will solve, only that being upright makes him feel like he has more control over the situation. “You showed up, like, ten seconds ago and now you’re making assumptions about my life? You don’t know shit! Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

Aly stands up, too, glaring at him. “I’m trying to be your friend,” she hisses. “I’m trying to help you, Percy, before you mess up your life anymore. But you know what? I’m sick of this. I’m sick of dealing with all of you self-centered, obstinate heroes who never listen, who never learn--you want to hunt Jason and Nico down to the ends of the earth? Fine! Be my guest! But first you’d better find out why they’re doing all this, because--news flash--it isn’t actually to spite you!”

“What?”

She waves both hands at him, spinning around to stalk out of the room. “You want more answers? Ask Leo Valdez--I’m officially done.”

Leo? What does Leo have to do with anything? Torn between confusion and annoyance, Percy sinks back into his chair. He opens one of the bags she brought in; it’s a sandwich. BLT on rye, hold the mayo.

He throws it across the room.


	21. Chapter 21

Jason has the same three words spiraling around in his head. _You killed him. You killed him. You killed him_.

“Say it,” Nico says, sitting in the cockpit of the plane. He fiddles with a couple dials, but the thing’s on autopilot. There’s really no need. “We’ll both feel better.”

“How . . . how could you do that?” Jason asks. “You aren’t a cold-blooded . . .” he trails off. “You save puppies,” he says softly. “And you cook. You cared for me for pretty much my whole childhood. You didn’t even want to go to war, for crying out loud! You hated violence!”

“Note the use of the past tense,” Nico replies, lacing his fingers in his lap. “People keep telling you, Jason. I’ve changed.”

“But--” 

But _what?_ He lapses into silence.

Nico flips a few switches, probably just for show. “We’ll be in Siberia in a few hours,” he says. “Our priority is taking out those Soldiers. Then, with a little luck, we’ll be able to figure out who’s behind this mess and put him into some misery. I don’t know what happens after that, but,” he shrugs, “does it really matter?”

“It matters to me,” Jason says. “Because I love you, and it scares me.”

“Don’t,” Nico says.

“Don’t what?”

“Love me.” Nico has an ugly look on his face, the kind Jason was always afraid he’d wear if he found out about the dreams and the feelings and the little box in Jason’s head where he crammed all that junk and tried to forget about it. “You damn fool, I’d like to see just once where you don’t rush headlong into the worse possible situation. This is why I was always afraid to leave you alone.”

When he says things like that, Jason can’t see how this Nico could be anyone but his old friend. 

“There’s no one around now,” he says. “Can I kiss you?”

Nico shakes his head.

“What if I don’t ask for permission?”

“Then you’re an ass,” Nico snaps. “Keep your mind on the mission.”

“Neeks, I’m trying to get _your_ mind off the mission. It’s basically been my life goal since you popped up as the Winter Soldier.” Jason kneels in front of his chair. “C’mon. Just once.”

Nico scowls, but his hand reaches out anyway, tracing the scar on Jason’s upper lip. 

“I knew this would happen,” he murmurs. “I’m different around you. It’s like, before, with the memories and the conditioning, I was fading away. The more time I spend with you, the more solid I feel.”

“That’s good,” Jason says encouragingly, taking Nico’s flesh hand in both of his.

Nico draws it away at once. “It’s bad. It feels like I’m sinking into the ground under the weight of my own body. There are some things I don’t want to remember.”

Jason reaches up, gripping Nico’s head, fingers thrusting through his dark hair. “Then let me help you forget.”

Without waiting for permission--since he doubts it will be forthcoming--Jason yanks Nico’s head down, crashing their lips together. He winds his arms around Nico’s neck and pulls him out of the chair, toppling backwards over the sudden weight imbalance. 

He likes the feeling of Nico straddling him, even as Nico struggles upwards, hands on either side of Jason’s shoulders for leverage.

“Oh, dammit all,” he growls, and leans down to kiss Jason again. 

The last time Jason was in an aircraft with Nico, it wasn’t half as pleasant.

He had a dream like this once, but it was nowhere near close to the reality. The reality smells a lot more like gasoline and sulfur, and this Nico has shadows in his eyes that scare Jason, and there’s more noise and the floor is hard and fuck it all, he really doesn’t care.

Nico scrabbles with his mask, and Jason reaches up to yank it off, sitting up in the process. He guides Nico’s hands to the zipper of his suit, silently encouraging him to remove it.

_Come on, come on, I’ve been waiting years for this._

He bucks his hips, itching to grind against Nico like he did in the warehouse, and it’s amazing how close to two decades of ingrained homophobia can vanish in the face of Nico’s incredibly flexible tongue. Nico presses his prosthetic hand to Jason’s chest, pinning him back down with just that one point of contact, his free arm snaking behind Jason’s head. 

Jason fights with the other boy’s clothes, desperate to get past the layers and to Nico’s skin. He strains up against Nico’s grip, dropping his mouth to Nico’s collarbone as he manages to wrestle the sweatshirt off his shoulder. 

Nico’s chest is heaving under his lips, the skin hot to the touch. His hand slips from Jason, and Jason uses the opportunity to wrap both arms around Nico’s waist, locking them together.

He wants. He wants and wants and wants and he didn’t know it was possible to want this badly. This feverish feeling has never tangled around his intestines before, teasing his dick and turning his brain into a single goal: get Nico naked. He has no idea what he’ll do after that point, only that he wants to reach it so badly, he’s practically slavering, panting at Nico’s neck like a dog. 

Nico yanks him up by the chin, kissing him again, sliding his tongue around the edges of Jason’s lips until, half-crazed, Jason opens his mouth and lets him in. 

_Don’t stop._

_Don’t ever stop._

His hapless mind demands that he stop time this very instant, that he cement it in eternal memory that he French-kissed Nico di Angelo and both of them liked it. But since he can’t do that, he settles for digging his fingers tightly in Nico’s back, enjoying the grunt of surprise that earns him. 

“Fuck it, that hurt,” Nico growls, barely pulling away, his breath hot on Jason’s face. He tightens his hold on Jason’s shoulder to prove the point; since he uses his vibranium hand, he proves it a little too well. 

“If you leave a bruise,” Jason threatens, shrugging the hand away.

Nico smirks. “I intend to leave many bruises.”

He shrugs off his sweatshirt and pulls his t-shirt over his head, tossing it to the side. His skin is pale, mottled olive from his sun-robbed complexion, and pulled tight over his muscles. Clarisse left a few scratches, but they’re already on their way to healing. The place where his shoulder joins with his metal arm is riddled with scars and puckered skin, but colorless; a healed, harmless old wound. 

Jason laps at the scars anyway, nipping the skin when Nico makes a noise of protest. He slides his hands up and down Nico’s back, and mouthes his way to Nico’s chin, enjoying the strange rhythm of their unsteady breath.

He’s rising up, the constrictions of his suit becoming more and more obvious with every second. He pulls back to wriggle out of his pants, and freezes.

Nico stops, too, hovering over Jason, the rosary around his neck dangling between them. 

“I can’t,” Jason says, covering his mouth with both hands. His horrified eyes stay fixed on the swinging chain of beads. How could he? How could he? 

Nico doesn’t say a word, just rolls off him and retrieves his shirt, slipping it over his head in one fluid motion. He kicks his sweatshirt aside and starts rummaging through the cargo hold, apparently not in need of any explanation to the sudden stop. 

“You’re not Nico,” Jason says aloud, feeling like he might as well be digging his grave with the words. “Because Nico was . . . his body was different. And he’d never do . . . he wasn’t gay. And the idea of doing that to him--to you--I can’t. It wouldn’t be right, because you’re confused right now, and I’m . . .”

Nico pulls a Kevlar vest out from one of the lockers, slipping it over his shirt. He examines a few boxes of ammunition, looking for the right grade, before jamming a few rounds into the pockets of the vest. He keeps his back to Jason.

“You’re not Nico,” Jason repeats, finally realizing what they’d all been trying to tell him.

“Took you long enough,” the Winter Soldier mutters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huuuuuuuuuge round of applause to everyone who's made it to this point! I keep telling myself I'm going to post shorter chapters, and less of them, but there's just . . . so . . . much xD. Anyway, only eight more to go until the end so thanks for reading and check back next Sunday! Regular updates are back.


	22. Chapter 22

“Let me see her,” Annabeth says. Her hands are pressed against the glass dividing her and Percy. “At least tell me she’s okay.”

“She hasn’t woken up,” he says curtly. “And neither has Grover, thanks for asking.”

When Hermes first told him the CTTF had built a floating prison specifically for “threats unable to be contained by normal means”, he’d thought it was a joke. Alcatraz for supers? Yeah, right.

But now he stands in the center of it, his former friends in cells around him, and it doesn’t seem so funny. It’s just sad. He wants to scream at them all for being idiots--all they had to do was fall in line. But no, they couldn’t even get their act together long enough for that.

“This doesn’t change anything, y’know,” Leo says. He has his feet propped up on the glass wall of his cell, arms folded under his head. He looks relaxed, but Percy knows it’s an act. “I mean, locking us up doesn’t really encourage us to join Team Iron Man, get what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, we’re the good guys!” Sadie Kane exclaims. “You’re wasting time with us while actual bad guys are getting away with murder! What the hell, hero?”

“Don’t bother, Sadie,” her brother replies from the next cell over. He gives Percy a tired look. “Leopards don’t change their spots--and nothing you say will change his mind.”

“Well, this is a lovely chat,” Percy says briskly. “Clearly, I should drop by more often.”

“Piper,” Annabeth insists. “Tell me about Piper.”

“Shut up!” he snaps, whirling on her. “You betrayed me--why should I do anything for you?!”

“Why are you here, then?!” she snarls, banging on the glass. “Come to gloat?”

He glares, feeling himself bristle, and forces himself to let go of the antagonistic feeling. “No,” he relents. “I came because--someone told me--apparently, there’s a reason you all did what you did. I came to hear it.”

Leo snorts.

“What, now you care?” Sadie demands. “Where were your listening ears when Jason was trying to tell you?”

“Just let them go,” Leo says. “Leave them in peace; they aren’t going to hurt anybody . . . who doesn’t deserve it.”

“They left Grover to die,” Percy says flatly.

“That was . . . unfortunate,” Leo admits. “But, trust me--”

“I don’t,” Percy interrupts. “And, beyond that, I don’t trust Nico. Whatever he’s told Jason and the rest of you--”

“He didn’t say a thing,” Leo growls. “We figured it out for ourselves. But I don’t see why I should tell you--you wouldn’t believe me.”

Percy scowls. He raises his hand, sending out an EMP with just a twitch of his fingers. The security cameras go dead, at least for the ten minutes or so it’ll take for the guards to reboot them. “Try me,” he suggests.

Leo stares at him.

“Hurry,” Percy snaps. “It won’t take long for them to send guards down to check on us.”

Leo and Annabeth exchange a glance, and then Leo speaks up.   
“Okay, the long story short is that Nico was framed for the bombings by an unknown person. We think it was to drive him out into the open so that it would be easier for this person to get to him--to brainwash him into being the Winter Soldier again and order him back to Siberia, where there are apparently a shitload of other Winter Soldiers just waiting to be activated. Jason and Nico are going to stop them now, only we don’t know who this guy is or what he’s capable of or why he wants an army of deadly assassins--though, I guess the last one’s self-explanatory. Who wouldn’t want an army of deadly assassins?”

Percy looks at Leo for a heartbeat, just trying to process that. “Okay,” he says slowly. “Okay, I can understand that . . . but why didn’t he just say something?”

“You were a little busy condemning Nico as a murderer,” Leo says. “The CTTF was also more concerned with apprehending him than anything else--I mean, it makes sense, he was being a serious pain in the ass at the time and they’re nothing but faceless mooks designed to make our lives more difficult. Talking rationally or analyzing evidence isn’t really their MO.” He shrugs. “Does that put things in perspective?”

“Nico’s still dangerous,” Percy says flatly. The whole story sounds a little far-fetched to him--but he’s not going to make the same mistake twice. He’s going to gather more information before striking this time. He’s going to be smarter. “He can’t be trusted.”

Leo shrugs again, tilting his head back to examine the ceiling. “Not from where I'm sitting,” he says. “Locking us up, man? Not cool.”

“I had no control over--” Percy begins, and then stops. “Fine. Be mad at me. It’s not like you made a conscious decision to go against the United Nations or anything.”

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil,” Leo quotes, “is for good men to do nothing. Jason acts based on his faith--sure, he might make a few blunders, but at least he’s standing up for what he believes in. I’m proud to follow his example.”

“The problem with your logic,” Percy retorts, “is that if we all go around punching our way out of problems, stubbornly holding onto our beliefs without ever compromising, the world will soon be full of broken walls, black eyes, and shattered trust.”

“Sometimes you gotta take a stand,” Leo says.

“Well, Jason did, and now we’re all standing,” Percy says bitterly. “Divided.”

As he leaves the room, all he can hear is the echo of Annabeth’s slow, sarcastic clap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my God, I say "regular updates are back" and then I don't update . . . wtf, me. 
> 
> side note, I apologize for gratuitous Kane sibling snark, I know this is a PJO fic I just . . . I love them so much . . .
> 
> excuse my hotmessness bye


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I derive entirely too much joy from being able to use the word "chucklewit" in a sentence_

Jason and Nico stand in the snow.

“Tell me about him,” Nico says quietly. He has the rosary clenched in one fist, the cross swinging in a lazy circle over the snow. “Give me a memory.”

“He used to cut my hair,” Jason says at once. “The last time was right before he went into basic. The scissors were cold.” Everything was cold--Nico’s hands, the chair, the room, Jason’s heart. It was easily one of the worst days of his life. “We didn’t talk. I was angry that he was going when I couldn’t, and he was angry that he had to go when he didn’t want to. And I think we were both trying not to think about the possibility that he wouldn’t come back.”

“But he didn’t come back,” Nico says. “And neither did Jason Grace.”

“I used to think that way,” Jason tells him. “I used to think that everything I was died when they pumped the serum through my veins, and I was glad of it. Before, I’d just been some kid withering away in Brooklyn, a burden to you--someone that everyone else had long since shucked off. I wanted to be the hero instead.”

“Always the big damn hero,” Nico echoes. He stands motionless, even his chest hardly rising with his breath. He stands out among the bleached surroundings like a large, sleep-deprived crow.

“When I saw your face on the bridge, two years ago, it made me realize I was wrong,” Jason says. “I didn’t kill one part of myself to transform into something better. I shoved that kid so far down, I forgot he existed. But he’s still there--still here.” 

He touches his heart. “Because, let’s be honest, it’s me. I’ve always wanted to be a hero. I’ve always tried to do the right thing. I’ve always,” he hesitates. “I’ve always loved the Nico di Angelo from Brooklyn who scolded me for leaving the window open while I slept. The one who put out bowls of milk from stray cats even when we had only pennies to eat with, who read every single one of my cartoons even when they were lame and not funny.”

“But that isn’t me now,” Nico says. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about kindness. I’m not . . . I try, but it doesn’t come easily.”

“I understand,” Jason says. “I honestly see what Percy and Piper and even Leo were trying to tell me about you. They’re right.”

Nico sighs, sounding relieved. He looks at Jason with a funny expression on his face, a little wistful and a little--if Jason’s right--happy. He looks like someone who’s just had a huge burden lifted from them. Jason didn’t realize he was putting Nico under so much pressure. 

“But, you know, I don’t wake up in the night wheezing anymore,” he goes on. “And I don’t draw so much, either. I’ve probably gotten a lot more cynical since we last stood next to each other like this. Like I said, though, that doesn’t mean I’m not myself. The same goes for you--even though you’re different, that doesn’t mean you aren’t Nico di Angelo.”

He reaches out and thumps Nico on the chest. “Same DNA. Born from the same parents. Grew up in the same city.”

His hand migrates to Nico’s temple, brushing aside the boy’s dark hair. “And the memories are still there, too, just buried. There’s more to a person than just their body and mind--even if you completely wreck those two, there’s still something inside you that’s you, Nico . . . whatever it is that convinced you to spare my life. Whatever it is that had you lying low in Bucharest rather than make money as a hired thug.”

He pauses, unsure of how to broach the next thing he has to say without coming across as an ass. He probably should have rehearsed this, or something. “Before, when I pushed you away,” he hesitates. “I still had my head wrapped around the old Nico. The one who . . .” His eyes fall to the rosary, and he switches directions. “I had this crazy idea that I was corrupting your memory, and that you’d hate me once you came back to your senses . . . like you’d just flip a switch one day and be the old Nico again.”

“That is crazy,” Nico says flatly. “This is who I am now.”

“I know. I’m sorry I did that,” Jason replies. “I guess what I’m trying to tell you is, I love you. I really do. Whether it’s 1934 or 1941 or 2014 or 2016; if you think you’re Nico or the Winter Soldier or the Nutcracker Prince. Nothing you do can change that, and I really wish you felt the same way about me.”

“Jason--” Nico sighs. “You’re really an idiot, you know?”

“What?”

Nico shoves him, more or less good-naturedly, but forcefully enough to knock him backwards into the snow. 

“You’re the first fucking thing I remembered, you daft chucklewit!” he exclaims. “Seeing your face was enough to shake years of their crazy mind control! You’re the thing inside me that made me spare your life, that convinced me to stop being an assassin! You’re the part of me that’s stayed the same whether it’s 1934 or 2014 or any of those other years! And you’d fucking know that if you stopped to ask me at any point in this adventure, instead of just dragging me along like your damsel in distress!”

He stops, breath coming in short, visible, angry puffs in the cold air, both fists clenched, standing over Jason with a pissed off expression on his face. It’s the most animated he’s looked since the beginning of their trek. Jason’s seriously afraid he’s about to get his hide tanned.

But instead Nico thrusts his arm out, tossing the rosary away and into the snow.

“Nico--!” Jason scrabbles to get up, to chase after the thing, but Nico stops him, seizing both of his arms and pinning him down.

“Stop,” he hisses, face inches from Jason. “It’s nothing but a relic, Jase. It’s got nothing to do with us.”

“It was your mother’s--” Jason begins. “You said--”

“I _remember_ what I said,” Nico cuts him off. “But that promise is fulfilled now--I came back, and you don’t need some rosary to keep in my place, because I’m here. All of that shit you’ve been carrying around; old promises and memories and everything that happened in 1939; it’s time to leave it behind. No more reminiscing. Everything behind us is so fucked up, I’d rather just look forwards. We’ll do better this time around.”

“Nico--” Jason’s lip is quivering. He really hopes Nico doesn’t notice. 

“We’ve left them here, alright?” Nico asks roughly. “All that shit you were talking about; the memories and who-are-wes and the bullshit identity crises. I’ve lived the past two years not thinking about that stuff, just being who I am. It’s simpler that way.”

He steps back, releasing Jason. “Whether or not I love you isn’t the issue,” he says. “I’ve always loved you, Jason, and I’m prepared to swear on that. But you’re continually blinded by how you think things should be. Just exist, Grace, and let everything else fall after that.”

Jason swallows. “Nico--”

Nico spins on his heel, heading towards the partially-snowed-in base. “Let’s get this goddamn day over with,” he says. “Then we’ll talk about what’s next.”

Jason abruptly feels the shift in their relationship, as Nico once more takes control. It’s kind of backwards, but he really feels for the first time what he’s been insisting all along; this is Nico. He’s always taken care of Jason, and this is no different.

He was floundering for years, going three different directions and doubling back on himself; trying to be a hero, trying to save Nico, trying trying trying but never managing to get things quite right. Percy’s against him now, and the rest of their allies are God-knows-where. He’s fucked everything up. 

But all that’s okay now, because Nico told him what to do. Nico’s here to protect him again.

Jason’s starting to realize he can’t do much without that.


	24. Chapter 24

Aly’s waiting for Percy on the helipad.

“What are you doing here?” he demands. “I thought you were done with me.”

She shrugs, hands in the pockets of her baggy coat. “I didn’t think you’d actually go see Leo,” she confesses. “But when you did, I realized I was wrong to judge you so quickly.”

“You’ve been spying on me?”

She smiles. “That’s my job, isn’t it? To babysit you for the CTTF, make sure you don’t get into too much trouble?”

He stares at her. “I can’t tell if you’re really scary or just clever,” he confesses. “Why do you seem to know so much?”

“Again. It’s my job,” she says. “Do you want a ride to Siberia or not?”

“Oh, sure, we’ll just take off for Siberia,” he says airily. “Why the hell not? I’ve been everywhere else in Europe this week.”

“Well, we don’t have to go,” she replies. “But I thought you should know--Clarisse la Rue found out where Nico and Jason are headed, and went after them about twenty minutes ago. I don’t think she plans to play by the rules this time--she wants blood.”

Percy swears. Just what they need, a pissed-off princess added to the already volatile mix. “Any other bad news?”

“Just this, boss,” she says, opening the door of the jet for him. “Piper McLean woke up. She’s understandably . . . confused.”

Percy gets into the jet, mind working furiously. “Okay,” he says, clambering into the cockpit and taking the headset down from its overhead hook. “Okay, here’s what I need you to do. Contact Hermes, tell him to convene a meeting with the CTTF. Put together a case for releasing Annabeth into Piper’s care--hopefully, the two of them will keep each other in check. Get the Kanes off, too; that’ll be easier since they’re minors and we really, really, really shouldn’t be jailing them according to Section Five, Paragraph, I think it’s eight or nine--look it up. There’s a clause for superpowered minors.”

“So, you want me to stay behind?” she asks, hovering between the jet and ground.

“I’ve got Jason,” he tells her. “I need you to get the rest of them.” He reaches out and takes her hand. “I believe that, at its heart, the Accords are necessary,” he says seriously. “You know that, right? I don’t want to see my friends hurt--I’m doing what I believe is right.”

“I know,” she says. “You’re telling the wrong person that.”

He sighs and lets her go. “Think it’s too late for Jason to listen?”

“See him for who he really is,” she advises. “And then take a leaf from his book, and follow your stupid heart. You do have one, even if it’s a little rusty.”

She presses her fingers to her lips, then his palm. “Be safe.”

She looks strange as he takes off from the helipad, his piloting skills fairly rusty since most of his flying is in a suit these days. Her hair swirls around her head in a tangled halo, the gray light making her dark eyes stand out inhumanly. The expression on her face reminds him of Jason; old beyond its years. And then she’s gone.

One by one, Percy thinks, he’s lost them all. He’s truly alone now, going to confront Jason and Nico.

Years ago, now, when he first started this Iron Man gig, he was by himself. He didn’t have a legion of super-friends at his back, or an entire government agency dedicated to regulating the shit out of his powers. Grover was some guy he’d known for forever, and Rachel was just his secretary.

So much has changed since then. Everything has changed since then, except this: Percy is still fighting alone. He still hasn’t learned how to gather the kind of loyalty and leaderhship Jason exudes like second nature. Is it his choices? His personality? What makes Percy that much different than Jason? Why is it that, when the lines are drawn and it’s time to choose sides, everyone springs to Jason’s?

_It’s because you’re an ass_ , the helpful little voice in his head says. _Besides, people don’t trust you unless you trust them, and you’ve never really trusted anyone since Hades._

“That’s not true,” he mutters rebelliously. “I trusted Jason.”

_Oh, clearly. That’s why you gave him half a chance with Nico--oh, wait. You didn’t._

His conscience--if that’s what it is--is cutting him no slack today.

Percy doesn’t want another fight. He wants to believe that Leo’s right and Nico was framed--that they can all go home happily and swap war stories over hamburgers and chili dogs. But he needs proof before he can let himself believe that. He isn’t capable of blind faith.

He sets the aircraft on autopilot and snaps down his helmet, pulling up his Internet feed. “All right, Blackjack,” he says, addressing his new AI, “give me something on Nico di Angelo.”

“Nico di Angelo likes blackberry ice cream, according to the 2003 documentary on the Howling Commandos,” Blackjack replies, and Percy’s fondness for smart-aleck technology once more explodes in his face.

“Okay, more specific parameters--tell me where Nico di Angelo was on the morning of the U.N. attack.”

The computer beeps, and gives an error message: “Somethin’s weird, boss. Are you sure you don’t want to rethink that question?”

“What? No,” he says. “I want a location on Nico di Angelo the day of the U.N. bombing. Do your thing. Scan traffic cams. Hack government technology. Shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.”

“Somethin’s weird, boss. Are you sure you don’t want to rethink that question?”

Percy sighs in frustration. “Fine. What’s the problem?”

“Two confirmed Nico di Angelo sightings,” Blackjack reports. “One: 6:45am. Bucharest. Two: 7:15am. Vienna. Error. This is impossible.”

He grimaces. “Any existing technology we know of that can instantly teleport a man?”

“Asgardian magic,” Blackjack says. “But no Asgardian activity has been detected for the past four months.”

“I’m aware of that,” Percy mutters grimly. “Is there any way di Angelo hired a body double to act as his alibi in Bucharest?”

Blackjack is quiet for a few seconds, and then: “Of the seven Nico di Angelo lookalikes currently alive, four are over fifty years old, two were provably in other countries at the time of the attack, and the last is in a mental institution.”

Gorgeous. Percy drums his fingers on the armrest of his seat. “Bring up the investigation of the bombing,” he orders. “What does the official report say? Summarize.”

“The bomb went off at 8:01am,” Blackjack says. “Sixteen injuries. One casualty. Point of origin appeared to be the southwest corner of the building. Traffic cameras picked up Nico di Angelo carrying a bag to that spot, and leaving without it.”

“What kind of picked up?” he demands. “Profile, full-on, what? Show me the footage.”

It plays out on his visor immediately. A man in a dark jacket enters the screen, carrying a heavy duffel bag, and disappears into some bushes. He reappears, turns to face the camera, and then leaves.

Funny. Everyone makes this big deal about Nico being a deadly assassin, and he goes and looks straight at a--

“Continue the report,” Percy orders.

“Further cameras place Nico di Angelo at various points in the city. He enters the Vienna International Airport. It is assumed he purchases a ticket under a false name.”

“Assumed? They don’t know for sure?” he asks.

“Security footage from the airport is not yet available,” the computer says. “A formal request must be made.”

Percy groans. “Fucking bureaucracy.That’s it? That’s the whole report?”

“Yes. Further investigation was not needed.”

“Alright. Fabulous.” Percy retracts his helmet and frowns. It seems like a pretty open-and-shut incident, but it doesn’t explain why there’s also documentation of Nico being in Bucharest at just about the same time. And the whole Nico-looking-at-the-camera thing is niggling at him.

If the guy knew the camera was there, he would have hidden his face--even amateurs know that much. If he didn’t, why did he pause for that second to look around? It’s almost like he wanted to be seen.

“Blackjack,” he says aloud. “There are ways to make a man look like another man, aren’t there?”

“Yes. It is a common practice of movies and stage productions to utilize ‘false faces’ and prosthetics as a means of disguise,” Blackjack says. “There is also holographic technology, magic, and--”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Percy interrupts. “You can stop.”

If someone really did set Nico up, then they wouldn’t want to be connected to the bombing in any way. At the same time, they would need to orchestrate a bombing so that there would be something to frame Nico for. And if--it’s a hunch, but Percy’s got a buzzy feeling about it, so it must be a good one--someone had the ability to put on a false face and look like Nico, while carrying out the bombing themselves, well . . . two birds, one stone.

“Blackjack, are there any visual triggers or behavioral ticks in the Nico di Angelo captured in the footage you just showed me?”

“No.”

“Anyone coming out of the airport wearing the exact same clothing as Nico di Angelo in the footage you just showed me?”

Pause.

“No.”

“Any males of the same height and build as the Nico di Angelo in the footage you just showed me?”

“Forty-three.”

Percy groans. He could really use another head to bounce ideas off of right now. He misses having an assistant.

He shakes his head, telling himself to think. Is there anything else he can figure out, just by using the footage he has so far?

“Shoes,” he says aloud, snapping his fingers.

“Sorry, boss? Didn’t quite get that request.”

“When a child is kidnapped, they always ask about their shoes,” Percy mumbles. “Because clothes can be changed quickly, but shoes can’t. Or something. Anyway.” He clears his throat. “Nico di Angelo was wearing boots, right?”

“Correct.”

“Motherfuckers are impossible to get off. Of the forty-three people to come out of the airport with Nico di Angelo’s height and build, how many were wearing that same type of boot?” Percy asks.

“Six,” Blackjack says, which is a lower number than Percy could have hoped.

“How many within an hour of the incident?”

“One.”

“Show me,” Percy commands, his visor sliding in place back over his eyes. A three-second clip of a bustling crowd places for him on a loop. “Freeze and zoom.”

The grainy face of some random guy pops up, and then he isn’t so random. Percy frowns. “Cross-reference that picture with my personal album,” he says. “Find me a match.”

Blackjack scans his pictures, then alerts him to a match with a high-pitched beep. “Chris Rodriguez. Killed in Sokovia, along with the rest of his family.”

Percy was afraid of that. “He’s not dead, Blackjack. Explain to me why this guy isn’t dead.”

“Somethin’s not right. Are you sure you don’t want to rethink that question, boss?”

“I’m good,” he says. “Give me the possibility of a Sokovian refugee thought to be dead showing up in the same airport Nico di Angelo, or someone pretending to be him, was seen in at the same time?”

Blackjack gives him a very, very, very small number.

Percy groans. “It’s him,” he mumbles, gritting his teeth in aggravation. “It’s got to be him.”

He gives Blackjack another command, and starts putting the pieces together.


	25. Chapter 25

It’s pretty much what Jason would have expected from a Hydra base--all gloomy stone rooms and stainless steel equipment. The lights are just bare bulbs, dangling from the low ceiling. It’s every base Jason’s ever raided, with the exception of hoardes of Hydra agents pointing sharp objects at him and shouting threats in German.

Nico’s tense, and Jason doesn’t blame him. He’d be tense, too, if he were in Nico’s shoes. Hell, he’s tense right now and he wasn’t created here.

They move through the base slowly, Jason in front with the shield, Nico covering his back and whispering directions. His voice is strained. Jason feels for him.

“Just into that elevator,” Nico says, gesturing towards a rickety-looking contraption that doesn’t look like it could lift a feather, let along Jason and Nico’s combined weights. They pile in anyway.

Jason can’t wait for this whole thing to be over. The problem with his job, though, is that he never knows exactly when over comes; there’s always a new crisis, new threat, new enemy. The more heads he cuts off, the more grow back. It’s a neverending battle.

The elevator rattles and clatters and shakes, jostling Jason on the way down. His shoulder bumps Nico’s.

“Y’know, I was thinking, after we get rid of these Soldiers and kick the ass of whoever brainwashed you,” he proposes, “provided we aren’t still international criminals, maybe we could grab a froyo or something.”

“A what?”

“A froyo.” Jason’s pleased to be the one who knows something for once. “Frozen yogurt--it’s like ice cream, but more fattening. You’ll love--I mean, I think you’ll love it.”

Nico sighs.

“Is that a yes?” Jason asks, as the elevator grinds to a halt.

Nico unshoulders his gun, pointing it cautiously out the opening in front of them. “Kick ass first, talk date plans later,” he says, moving out into the room beyond.

Jason rolls his eyes and follows.

The room looks like a lab, albeit a lab run by Victor Frankenstein and decorated by Elvira. A metal table is in the center of the room, surrounded by six cryogenic chambers. The table is full of dusty, dated equipment that Jason couldn’t name for the life of him. It’s clearly been abandoned for a long time.

“There’s no one here,” Jason states the obvious.

Nico moves to the chambers, his face pale. “They’re dead,” he says, pointing at the cracked glass of one of the units. Jason walks over to see for himself. The Soldier inside has been shot, apparently through the cryo chamber walls. It isn’t a pretty sight.

“Someone got here before us,” Jason says. “Well . . . I guess that’s one less thing for us to worry about.”

“But that doesn’t help us find who did this,” Nico says, frustrated. He scowls at the dead body.

There’s a sound behind Jason; miniscule, hardly noticeable, not the kind of thing he would even pay attention to if he weren’t in the middle of an enemy base in a foreign country--he and Nico whirl in unison, falling into a battle stance.

Percy holds up his hands, face plate retracting. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he cries. “I come in peace--or something--anyway, don’t shoot me!”

Jason lowers his shield. Nico keeps his gun up until Jason puts a hand on his shoulder. Then he brings it down, finger still on the trigger.

“What do you want?” Jason asks evenly. The last time he saw Percy, things hadn’t been friendly. He scans the room, looking for signs that his friend brought company.

“I’m alone,” Percy guesses his concerns. “SparkNotes version--I heard about the Soldiers, I did some research, and Nico was set up. While he’s still guilty of a lot of things, bombing Vienna--and everything that happened after that--is not on the list.”

Jason’s never been more relieved in his life.

“Dude,” he says, slinging his shield onto his back and tackling Percy in a bear hug. “Thank God.”

Percy wriggles uncomfortably. “The thing that’s happening right now? Stop it.”

Jason steps back. “Sorry, sorry. I just--man, it’s good to have you back.”

“You’re the one who flew off the handle,” Percy mutters.

“Was not,” Jason argues.

Nico clears his throat. “This is all very heartwarming,” he says. “But did you find out who set me up, Jackson?”

“I did, in fact,” Percy says. “And don’t think I don’t hear that skeptical note in your voice. We’re looking for a Chris Rodriguez.”

The name clicks in Jason’s mind. “The STRIKE agent?”

“Strike agent?” Percy asks.

“Yeah, a member of Leo’s old team,” Jason says. “He was working for Bryce. I kicked his ass in an elevator once.”

Nico makes an impressed noise. Percy rolls his eyes.

“Of course you did. Trust you to remember something so random.”

“I do people,” Jason shrugs. “You have computers, Piper has . . . lethal weapons, I have people. It’s my thing.”

“I thought punching things was your thing,” Percy interjects.

“Punching things is my thing,” Nico says, flexing his cybernetic fist. “Jason, find your own thing.”

“I have a thing--it’s people!” Jason exclaims.

“Not punching them, I hope.”

Percy claps his hands. “Okay, fun talk," he says. “Now back on topic. Rodriguez. I think he had an accomplice. I was looking at--”

“The Avengers,” a new voice says. “Finally.”

Jason tenses, raising his shield. Nico’s head snaps around, looking for the source of the voice. Percy’s the one to point it out--a glass viewing room above their heads. Jason didn’t notice it earlier; he internally kicks himself for his lack of observation.

Chris Rodriguez waves at them, holding some kind of microphone in his hand. His voice emanates from three or four places in the room: hidden speakers, Jason guesses.

“It took you long enough to find me,” Rodriguez says. “I was beginning to think I’d have to throw up a neon sign--although, I did wonder if di Angelo’s vague memories would really be enough to draw you here. You aren’t exactly known for your detective work, Grace.”

Jason growls. “What do you want with us?” he demands. “With Nico?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Percy cuts in, before Rodriguez can reply. “This is revenge.”

“This is revenge,” Rodriguez agrees. “Good to see at least one of you has a brain.” He shrugs. “Not going to pretend this is an original thought, but you guys suck. You let my family die--not cool, guys. I mean, you’ve got all these crazy powers and there’s no one around who can really stop you, and still people die? And the government does nothing? Does that make sense to you?” He shakes his head. “Doesn’t make sense to me. If you ask me, the system is broken.”

“No one asked you,” Jason growls.

“Only one thing to do if the system is broken,” Rodriguez says, ignoring him. “Throw it the fuck out.”

“That’s great, you should put that on a t-shirt,” Percy puts in. “Real inspiring turn of phrase. Now let’s skip to the part where we kick your ass, please? I’m kind of on a schedule.”

“Percy, we don’t know joe about this guy,” Jason mutters. “Should you really be provoking him? What if he’s got powers we aren’t aware of?”

Rodriguez lets out a harsh laugh. “Me? Powers?” he demands. “If I had superpowers, do you think I’d be here today? No--I’d be back with my family, in Sokovia. See, if I had the power to save my family, I would have done it. Unlike you ignorant twats.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Percy deadpans. “Now he’s cursing at us in British.”

“British isn’t a--” Nico begins.

Percy fires a short repulsor burst at the viewing room, the blast drowning out Nico’s words. When he lowers his arm, however, the glass windows are still intact.

“Shoot at me all day if you like,” Rodriguez says. “This room was built to withstand the assault of six Nico di Angelos. I doubt your palm cannon will dent it.”

Jason grits his teeth. “The best plan is to--”

“He can hear us,” Percy interrupts. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so loud, Captain Obvious.”

“You’ve been waiting to trot that one out, haven’t you?” Jason asks, annoyed.

“Wow,” Rodriguez butts in. “I don’t even have to fight you guys. You’re so busy fighting yourselves, you don’t notice anything else.” He pauses. “Well, that’s how I managed to manipulate you all here in the first place, so I can’t complain. But seriously. I was expecting more of a battle--I even brought backup.”

“Backup?” Jason and Percy chorus.

There’s a rustling noise behind one of the cryo chambers, and a black-suited figure slips out. Jason recognizes the glint of vibranium claws at once.

“Clarisse!” Percy cries.

At Jason’s side, Nico tenses. “She cornered me in Bucharest,” he says in a low voice. “She drove me out--right into the CTTF. I would have escaped if she hadn’t shown up.”

“I can’t trust anyone,” Percy complains.

Rodriguez laughs again. “Little do you know,” he says. “Clarisse, show him the tape.”

Clarisse moves to the table in the center of the room. Out of the mess of equipment, she pulls out a portable DVD player and turns it on. The casual way she ignores Nico’s gun and Percy’s repulsors frightens Jason. She’s too confident they won’t attack.

She sets the player on the edge of the table, well in Jason and the others’ line of sight, and pushes a button on its side. The screen flickers, and then a black-and-white view of a cell pops into view. It’s the basement where Nico was kept, two--three?--days ago. Will Solace is examining a folder of files at the desk in front of the cell, and Nico is slumped against the wall, unmoving.

“No more fight?” Will asks, shuffling his papers. “I thought you’d uselessly hurtle yourself against the wall for a few more hours, at least.”

Nico glares at him.

“No? All right then,” Will says genially. “We’ll get on with the psych evaluation.”

“I’m not crazy.” Even through the tinny quality of the recording, Nico’s voice is hoarse. He sounds like his throat is made of sandpaper.

Will makes a doubtful noise. “I wouldn’t go around saying that,” he says. “I mean, if you aren’t crazy, then you’re going to be seeing the inside of a cell for a long time. And it won’t be half as nice as this one.”

Nico doesn’t reply.

Will clears his throat. “Moving on--” He pauses, squinting at his paper. “What was I--oh, yes. Here. Fall.”

Nico’s shoulder twitches. “What?”

“Cold. Pain. Grace.”

Nico’s head snaps up, and his shout is so loud, it defies the capacity of the audio device to capture. “NO!”

“War,” Will goes on calmly, totally unaffected by the scream. “Salvation.”

Nico’s body bucks, his hands clutching at his ears, legs thrashing, a violent change rippling through his body. Watching, Jason is horrified. He reaches out, touching the Nico beside him for reassurance.

But this Nico, rigid and blank-faced, has none to give.

“Blood. Soldier?” On the tape, Will folds his hands on the desk. Waiting.

Nico’s entire body goes limp. His head lolls on his shoulder. And then, slowly, he reassembles himself; stiffening his legs to hold him, his arms to prop him up, his head to sit upright on his neck. He stands at attention, a perfect toy soldier.

“Better test your memory,” Will mutters. “Make sure it’s really you. Soldier--give me your mission report.”

Nico stays silent.

Will snaps his fingers. “Right, my bad. Soldier, mission report, December 16, 2001.”

Jason’s blood runs cold. He knows that date. He glances sideways at Percy, whose eyes have gone wide.

_Please, no_ , Jason prays. _Please, let it be the assassination of some dictator, or terrorization of a third-world country. Or a pizza run. Just don’t let it be--_

“Target eliminated,” Nico reports, in a flat, mechanical tone. “P. Jackson. Eleven-fifty-nine p.m. One auxiliary--S. Jackson. Also eliminated.” Pause. Then, as if solely to add insult to injury, Nico says, “Heil Hydra.”

Seconds before Percy has time to react, Jason throws himself in front of Nico, thrusting him away from Iron Man. Percy’s expression has surpassed terrible and gone straight to murderous.

“What,” he says quietly, “the. Fuck.”

“Percy--” Jason begins.

Percy hauls back and punches him, then goes for Nico.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _action, action, action_

Jason’s head is still reeling from Percy’s punch, but he hauls himself up anyway and tries to get between his fighting friends.

“Guys, stop--” he begins, like they’re going to listen at all. Nico’s cornered and Percy’s pissed; giving up isn’t an option for either of them. 

Percy isn’t talking. That’s how Jason knows that it’s bad. Even when fighting, Iron Man always has something witty, irrelevant, or nasty to say. But not right now.

Jason thrusts his hands out, seizing Percy’s wrist and the top of the shield Nico’s clutching like a security blanket. After playing tug-of-war with a helicopter, stopping two of the world’s nuclear weapons should be nothing, but. Well. One of them still manages to shove him away, and he stumbles back. Nico lunges at Percy, slamming him upside the head with the shield, and Percy palms his chest, getting him point-blank with a repulsor beam. Nico crumples to the floor, and Jason instinctively sprints forwards to cover him, grabbing his shield from the floor to block Percy’s ensuing punch.

_CLANG._

“Stop this,” Jason tells Percy. “Enough.”

“Are you fucking with me?” Percy snaps. “You heard--you saw--he killed my mother!”

“I know that!” Jason barks, and Percy’s face goes blank. What Jason meant was _I know, I’m here with you_ , but what Percy reads is obviously different. Percy’s never been good at understanding Jason, never been able to sense moods or detect triggers or any of that bullshit; but of course now, of all times, of all the worse times in the world, he gets the right picture.

“You knew,” he accuses. “You knew what Nico did!”

Well shit. 

“How long?” Percy demands. “How long have you--”

“That doesn’t matter,” Jason cuts him off.

“My ass, it doesn’t! How long?!”

“Since Piper and I discovered who the Winter Soldier is!” Jason snaps. “But you can’t put this on me--she made me promise not to tell. At the time--”

“She made you promise?” Percy scoffs, his face stretching into a maniacal, non-humorous smile. “Made you? Like this is third grade and you pinky promised under the bleachers? You can’t blame Piper for this, Jason! You’ve been covering for Nico since the moment he came back, regardless of the fact that he doesn’t deserve it!”

Jason--Jason doesn’t have the words to contradict him. All he’s been hearing about Nico is that he’s dangerous, untrustworthy, that Jason is an idiot and a dreamer and a moron for believing in him. It’s been the same song and dance from a whole chorus of people. Jason gets it. Nico’s bad. He’s terrible. Blah, blah, blah. He’s heard the warnings, but he’s an adult. At some point, shouldn’t they all just accept that he’s made his decision and fucking move on with their lives?

“Nothing to say?” Percy growls. “You know that I’m right--why are you still defending him?”

Jason bites his lip. 

“Oh, that’s right,” Percy throws up his hands. “Because you’d rather stand there with your dick in your hand than admit that your gay friend is straight up evil.”

Alright. Just fucking enough already. 

Jason braces himself and swings his shield, clocking Percy squarely in the shoulder and whipping his body around to follow up with another blow to his back. Percy thrusts his hand out, relying on that good ole’ reactor beam, and Jason seizes his fist, crushing the wires in his fingers and mangling Percy’s glove beyond usability. 

Percy lashes out with his other hand, going straight for Jason’s eyes; Jason ducks his head instinctively and is met with Percy’s knee shooting up. He keels back, releasing Iron Man. 

Nico is suddenly there, seizing Percy around the throat and squeezing with his vibranium arm; Percy’s armor buckles.

Jason shouts, “NO!”, and slams himself into the two of them, not sure if it’s because he wants Percy alive, doesn’t want Nico to kill if he doesn’t have to, or a little of both. All three of them tumble to the ground, a knot of scrabbling limbs and heavy bodies, muffled curses in three different languages, Jason’s cheek is scratched and his knee digs into something soft that makes Nico yelp and Percy’s chest glows like a hot poker and explodes.

Jason goes flying, crashing into the operating table. Nico hits one of the glass chambers and it cracks, steam leaking out of the fissures that splinter over the surface on impact. Jason rolls to his feet, leaving the wreckage of the broken table behind. 

Percy also lurches to his feet, just as Nico hurtles the shield at him. He ducks; Jason catches it on the rebound and sends it ricocheting across the room, knowing that Percy is probably running a pattern analysis on him, sizing up the way he and Nico work together. Percy and his tech. 

Percy and his tech. Well, to use one of Leo’s favorite phrases, _duh_. 

Jason dashes to Nico, seizing his arm to hiss in his ear. “Don’t attack _him_ ,” he mutters, hoping Percy hasn’t added supersonic hearing to the list of things his fancy suit can do. “Attack the armor.”

Nico glances at him, understanding passing between them in a flash. Jason half thinks he might have been able to just look at Nico to relay the message; a unity he’s never had with Percy. Nico gives a jerky nod and sprints towards Percy, just as Iron Man hurtles towards them.

They clash like old world gods, and Jason’s arms fly up to protect him from the sparks. Both Percy and Nico, their bodies are their weapons. It shows in the way they fight, all hammering fists and twisting torsos, hands gripping each other’s bodies, using every inch of themselves to inflict injury on the other. Nico grabs Percy’s face plate and tears it off like a paper mask; Percy’s booted foot flattens him to the floor.

Jason wakes up and jumps in, careening over Nico’s fallen body to smash into Percy, knocking him to the ground as well. He socks him in the jaw--payback for earlier--and Percy bucks, trying to toss him away. His fist connects with Jason’s side, and a loud boom makes Jason fall off and twist around, trying to figure out the source of the noise.

Okay, so, Percy’s girly jet boots also shoot warheads, if Nico’s singed hair is anything to go by.

Good to know.

Jason’s frustration feels like it might bubble over. He never wanted this. He never wanted any of this, not to fight with Percy, not to have to choose sides, not to feel like loving Nico was going to damn him in some way. Stuck in the middle of this fight, he might as well be in a nightmare. 

“What, did someone hit the ‘pause’ button?” Percy hisses, glaring at him and Nico. “Done with the beatdown already?”

Jason realizes that when he stopped, Nico did, too. Nico is looking at him, following his lead, his face set and determined but not murderous or hateful. 

_He’s Nico_ , Jason’s inner voice whispers, and for once, it doesn’t sound like Nico or Piper or Percy, it just sounds like Jason, Jason back when he was drawing cartoons on the backs of green bean labels and wheezing after one flight of stairs. _He’s Nico, and he’s bigger than the whole universe to you, so stop whining and start kicking the ass of the guy who’s giving you shit about him. This is why you wanted to be stronger, dumbass. Percy’s nothing but another neighborhood bully calling Nico a fairy and now you can fucking do something about it, so do it!_

Jason grits his teeth. “Forget what I said,” he mutters to Nico. “I got this.”

“Jason--”

“I’ve got it!” Jason snaps, and cracks his knuckles.

“Cocky,” Percy snarks, lip curling. “Remind me why we used to be friends, asshole?”

“Not your charming personality,” Jason shoots back, and lunges for him.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _more Percy babble._

Percy’s getting his clock cleaned.

He should have known better than to take on two super-soldiers at once, but he’s Percy Jackson and practically allergic to making good life choices.

Take a vacation to a war-torn nation? Check. Invite a gang leader to fuck him up the ass? Why the hell not. Take to the air in a fashionable tin can? All over it. From his business decisions to his personal ones, Percy’s always excelled at making the wrong call, sometimes even on purpose. He thought the one good thing he had going for him was that someone as Boy-Scout-y and principled as Captain America would still hang out with him; and look how that turned out. 

While his body is occupied with getting the beating of his life, Percy’s mind drifts back to his conversation with Hazel in the compound, back when the worst problem they had was that she’d accidentally exploded a building. Seems like peanuts now. At least he had air conditioning and free soda; now, if he manages to survive this fight, he might just be looking at a long career as a glorified security guard--if the CTTF doesn’t lock him up for running after Jason on his own.

But hey, he’s always done his own thing.

What was it he’d said to Hazel? Something about shouldering guilt and just moving forwards?

Bullshit.

As Jason’s fist drives into his face for a third time, Percy knows this isn’t moving forwards. Sure, for Jason this spat is about Nico and honor and all that noble shit; but for Percy, it’s a sign of what he’s been doing wrong. He was an inventor before anything else--he should know better than anybody that ignoring a problem doesn’t fix it. This thing, this huge and terrible thing that would drive Jason to attack, has been lurking in him for months--for years, now--and Percy just ignored it. 

He should have known.

When he and Jason had their first after-battle beer together, and Jason started rambling about a kid named Nico; Percy should have known then. When Jason, who eschewed most technology on the basis that it wasn’t necessary for everyday life, began to spend more and more time on the laptop Percy got him, gathering the files on the Winter Soldier that had scattered throughout the internet; Percy should have known then. When Jason overlooked a bomb under his very nose just because some creep who was probably lying alluded to raping Nico; Percy definitely should have got it, then.

Jason’s in love with Nico. True-blue, one-hundred-percent homosexual love, and as far as Percy’s ever seen, true-blue-love is extremely incompatible with the superhero lifestyle. Look at Piper and Annabeth; even with their unique brand of chemistry, which Percy still fails to understand, they couldn’t make it. And Frank and Hazel go from one trainwreck to another. And every time someone has a little domestic trouble, a squabble or a tussle or even when things go their way--it’s a distraction. Missions are botched, people are hurt. Percy flies into the face of a wormhole. 

He’s had it up to here. It’s not even about Nico anymore--though he hates Nico, will always hate Nico, can’t see a future where he doesn’t hate the man who killed his parents--it’s about Jason not being there. Percy always thought, despite their differences, that Jason would always be on his side at the end of the day.

He was so wrong.


	28. Chapter 28

Percy’s got more than a few tricks up his sleeve . . . er, in his armor, as Jason finds out. He shoots Jason square in the face with an energy burst from his chest plate, the searing light burning as hot as an oven. Jason’s thrown back, ass over teakettle, into the wall.

He screwed his eyes shut at the last second, but his retinas are still iffy, his vision spotty and blurred. He can hear sounds of the fight continuing--looks like Nico stepped in after all. All Jason gets is smudges of motion in between the dark patches of his sight, but the clashes and clangs come in crystal clear.

It takes Jason a full minute and a half to recover his sight completely, by which time both Nico and Percy look a lot worse off than they did before. Nico has a few burns, and most of Percy’s energy conduits have faded to a powerless, dull black. Percy has Nico’s vibranium fist in one hand, struggling to twist it back like the world’s most violent arm-wrestling match.

As Jason watches, Nico brings his shield up to slam into Percy’s arm, attempting to break his grip; the shield bounces off the armor and hits Percy’s chest instead, cracking the protective plate over his arc reactor. With a roar of pure anger, Percy throws his whole weight into resisting Nico’s arm, his cry echoing through the cavern.

The arm tears off like it’s made of clay.

Jason bulls forwards, thrusting Nico aside and reclaiming his shield; he pounds Percy with it, again and again, beating on the armor that keeps him from really breaking anything--he doesn’t even realize he’s speaking until his throat starts to ache, and then he recognizes that he’s chanting, hoarsely now, “Don’t hurt him don’t hurt him don’t hurt him”.

“HE’S A KILLER!” Percy screams. He’s on the ground now, Jason kneeling over him with his shield raised. “His existence threatens everything you stand for!”

Jason drives the shield down for the last time, angling it so that the rim--and the concentrated force behind it--strikes Percy’s reactor. The covering over it shatters, leaving Percy’s life source--the only heart he has--exposed.

“What,” Percy pants. “You gonna kill me?” He curls his bruised lip. His face is peppered with cuts and smeared with dirt; Jason doubts that he, with his repulsor burns, looks any better. “Do it. I don’t wanna fuckin’ live in this world. It sucks.”

Jason actually considers it for a second. Then, horrified, he hurtles his shield away. What was he thinking?

“I won’t--I can’t--” He closes his eyes. He remembers a time when he was like this before, with Nico; when he realized that he couldn’t kill Nico whether he was the Winter Soldier or not. His friends are the only family he has. He can’t off them like it’s nothing. He can’t even entertain the notion.

Nico’s groaning on the floor, clutching his shoulder. The removal of the arm might not have been as painful as an actual amputation, but Jason’s sure it wasn’t a walk in the park. He’s pretty beat-up himself. There’s no sign of Rodriguez or Clarisse, either; though Jason’s in no condition to go after them.

Today’s been a loss, all around.

He gets to his feet, grimacing, and limps towards Nico. He doesn’t think he has the strength, but he hauls the other boy up. Once standing, Nico wraps his remaining arm around Jason’s waist, supporting him. Well. They support each other.

“Who the fuck are you?” Percy demands. “What did you do with my friend? Jason would never act like this--Captain America wouldn’t--”

“I’m done!” Jason yells, whirling on him. Nico struggles to keep him steady with the sudden motion. “First your father, then the Director, now you--! Everyone has an idea about who Captain America should be, like he’s this entity entirely separate from me! But he’s not. He’s me.”

Jason kicks at his shield. It clatters across the floor and bumps Percy’s shoulder, coming to a rest. “The reason I became a soldier was for Nico,” he says. He’s said it a thousand times, but the words sound different now. Maybe it’s because he’s finally being honest about why he did it for Nico. “Because I didn’t want to be left behind. The whole point of me being Captain America was so that Nico and I could stand together, equals, and I could look him in the eye and not feel inadequate or like I owed him anything. If it weren’t for him, I never would have been who I am.”

He squeezes Nico’s shoulder. “Take Nico out of the equation, and I’m not Captain America,” he says. “I’m just some guy in a stupid suit.”

“You don’t deserve the name,” Percy grunts. “Our nation wasn’t founded on principles of lies and cold-blooded murder. The Winter Soldier flies in the face of everything you’re supposed to stand for.”

“You don't get to decide that," Jason growls. "You don't get to decide who I am, or why." He releases Nico for a second, shuffling forwards on unsteady feet, and seizes the shield again. Fuck what Percy thinks. Fuck the judgment, the criticism--Jason's always, always, always done what he thought was right. And that's what makes him Captain America.

"That doesn't belong to you!" Percy shouts. Jason's amazed he still has the breath. "My father didn't haul you out of South Brooklyn to become this!"

"You think I can't be Captain America and support Nico," Jason accuses, wrapping his arm around Nico's shoulders again. "You're wrong. That's not the contradiction here. I can't support Nico and support you, Perce. And you know what? I'm sick of trying."

"LIKE YOU EVER DID!"

Grimacing, aching, seething, and still very much flying by the seat of his pants, Jason helps Nico hobble out of the room. 

He's done.

They're done.

This is it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _OMG only one more chapter left! Thank you guys for reading this through to the almost-end!!_


	29. Chapter 29

“Are you okay?” Jason asks quietly. His face looks like it got into a domestic dispute with a waffle iron, but still; he’s asking Nico if he’s okay.

Nico adjusts his grip on Jason’s torso, acutely feeling the absence of his prosthetic arm. It’s funny--he hated the thing--and now he misses it.

He bites back a chuckle.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’ve been--” Nico starts, and then shakes his head. “Never mind. It’s stupid.”

“Now you definitely have to share.”

“Fine. I was just thinking that I’ve been . . . disarmed.”

Jason stares at him for a second. The chuckle comes slowly--just a twitch of his lips, then a snort, as he tries (and fails) not to crack up. “Oh, God,” he moans. “You’ve finally gotten a sense of humor.”

It’s the exhaustion talking, but they both laugh more than they should, Nico eventually having to lean Jason against a wall so they can both catch their breath. They should be worried about Percy, and the CTTF, and Rodriguez, and the Wakandan panther lady, not to mention all of the people who’d love to get their hands on Nico and just haven’t shown their faces yet--but they aren’t. Nico isn’t, at least.

“We need to get back to the plane,” Jason finally says, dabbing at his mangled face. “I’m not crazy on the idea of hanging around here. And we have to get in touch with the others.”

“The others?” Nico echoes.

“Something tells me they didn’t send Leo and the rest home with chocolates,” Jason replies. “If we’re going to do this going-rogue thing, we need to do it properly. And, trust me--no one does rogue better than Leo.”

“You really count on him,” Nico observes, squashing a tinge of jealously he has no right to feel.

Jason laces his hand through Nico’s, searching his face for permission. “I can touch you, right?”

Nico looks at his feet, and hopes Jason can’t make out his blush under all the scrapes and bruising skin. “We’re kind of in the middle of something, Jase.”

“Yeah. It’s called ‘life going on’,” Jason says. He looks happy, which is baffling. Nico’s pretty sure they’re in dire straights right now, and it’s not going to get better any time soon. “If we don’t stop to do stuff like this every now and again, we’ll never have time. That’s how we got fucked up in the first place.”

“Were we fucked up?” Nico asks softly. “I don’t remember.”

Jason presses his forehead to Nico’s; Nico can feel his breath, smell the drying blood and sweat. Jason’s pulse is throbbing when Nico wraps his fingers around it. “I love Leo,” Jason says, which just about stops Nico’s heart. “He’s my best friend. And I love Piper even more than that--she’s been with me since the beginning. She understands me more than I thought someone could, outside of you.”

He presses a kiss to Nico’s lips. “But don’t look like that at me,” he goes on. “Because you’re my entire world. When I fell--when I froze--I never really thawed out. Not until I saw you again. Everything that happened before that day . . . it didn’t mean a damn thing. I was just doing what I was supposed to do because I was supposed to do it. I didn’t start to live again until I saw your face on the bridge.”

“Jesus,” Nico mutters, certain his face must be flaming red. “Read any romance novels lately? You sound revolting.”

Jason laughs softly. “I’m happy, Neeks,” he says. “Even if everything’s gone to shit. All those years, I was fighting like hell to get to a place where we could just sit and talk like this--and we’re here. The war’s finally over. I don’t give a flying fuck what happens next.”

Nico wants to scoff, but he understands the sentiment. There is one thing, though . . .

He puts his hand on Jason's shoulder, drawing him in, and whispers the one thing he's wanted to tell him since the war, since that night with Cal, in the camp. 

Jason's face turns bright red, but he nods so fervently, Nico's afraid he's broken Captain America.

And, it turns out, Cal was right. Nico-finally-has made it home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _THE END_


End file.
